#my workplace has been pretty good at training us

[post-futurism]

The most insidious thing about this Optus hack is that users who think they haven't been compromised because they haven't received any communications from Optus still could have had their name, email and DOB leaked to hackers. That information might not be in use immediately but could be stored in databases to be manipulated timelessly. It means that in a few months, years, or in ten years when the memory of having potentially lost your details to a hacker is the last thing you're thinking about, you get an email from what looks like a reputable company celebrating you for your recent birthday and linking to a website to get special offers or whatever. That website asks for your credit card details and bam you've been scammed.

It's the false sense of security that nothing has seemingly happened yet that's really going to get us, especially those of us who aren't trained to identify potential online scams. Optus, but moreover the government, has a responsibility to roll out a nation wide program teaching everyone how to identify scams because now the scammers could know enough personal information to trick us into thinking the source is legitimate. Prior to this attack people have already been scammed. It's a matter of national security and a moral responsibility in the digital age to teach everyone of all ages how to use the internet safely.

[valyrfia]

hi i came here from thearchercore where they said that you think there seem to be friendship cliques forming around the paddock as of late like carlando vs. lestappen. i've seen these divides between fans but what makes you think there's also that divide between drivers?

I wouldn't call them friendship cliques. More....workplace alliances regarding the way F1 is going and the way F1 should go.

(Full disclaimer. This is a theory of grid dynamics that's been brewing for a little while in my head and I've only really bounced it off people in dms so far, so feel free to critique or refine it.)

Now, why would these two camps clash? Apart from interpersonal reasons (power struggles at any of the teams for example, I think any of the drivers listed racing or PR would resent being labelled as the team's n2 driver), F1 itself as a sport is at a crossroads. We're seeing the obvious effect of DTS in popularising the sport and making these athletes world-famous. In the past, only the world champions really became world-renowned. Now, most drivers are massive social media stars, or even proper A-list celebrities in their own right (Daniel at the Met Gala, for example). This one one hand is brilliant for the sport, because it brings more attention and eyes, and F1 becomes far more popular than it ever has been in the past. Liberty media especially is fond of this, as it brings in more profit for them.

However, in a lot of ways quintessential aspects of racing are lost via appealing to the masses. We see this in the removal of traditional purpose-built tracks in the calendar to make way for street races, in team line ups prioritising the PR-friendliness of a driver much more than before. The question of can the individual personalities of these drivers be sold is now a much bigger factor when considering a line up now than it was even ten years ago.

Since the question of racing vs. PR is raging in F1 in general right now, I think there's natural battle lines being drawn up in the paddock at the moment, that seem to fall along drivers which prioritise racing results over PR, and drivers that rely on PR/sponsors to boost their image without the racing results to necessarily back it up. Let's call them the racing clique vs. the PR clique for simplification.

Furthermore, I think these battlelines are drawn between teammates more often than not. So for example, I'd say Oscar tends to fall into the racing clique, Lando the PR clique (because let's be frank, his level of hype in British media especially WITHOUT a grand prix win is a little ridiculous). Likewise, if we consider our once and future RBR teammate pair, Max is the racing, Daniel the PR.

Ferrari is a little trickier because Charles is a PR mastermind and plays the PR game well in order to manipulate public perception about him. However, I will say that above all Charles has a fair estimation of his own abilities, an incredible racing IQ, and a sharp hunger to win that shines through despite the scrupulous Ferrari PR training (lest we forget the origin of the Il Predestinato name). For this reason, I think I place him in the racing camp. Considering the way that the Sainz camp uses leaks, well-timed sympathy posts, and Carlando to boost the public perception of Carlos's racing ability, I would place Carlos in the PR camp.

There are also other natural flash tensions between these people, but from Lando and Daniel distancing themselves from Max post his Vegas derogatory comments (@tsarinablogs has written some good thinkpieces on this), to the Ferrari civil war (as currently being chronicled by @thearchercore, along with some pretty good evidence as to McLaren trying to copy Ferrari's contract renewal hype, which further puts Lando and Charles into conflict). I don't think the happy go lucky Landoscar dynamic will survive McLaren being a competitive car, especially if Oscar wins a grand prix before Oscar.

There are faultlines and flashpoints forming in the paddock, and I think that especially with the incoming silly season, this question of PR vs. racing when picking drivers will be thrown into haut relief and that'll serve to only heighten the natural and/or pre-existing tensions between these two different groups of people.

[theficpusher]

gotta catch 'em all. | nr | 957 harry takes louis on a pokemon adventure he won't forget.

Gotta Catch 'Em All by punchmelarry | G | 2259 Louis and Harry are distracted by Pokemon Go, just like everyone else. Louis can't believe how little Harry knows about Pokemon, and Harry can't believe how pretty Louis is.

You Teach Me (And I'll Teach You) by teaandtumblr | G | 3615 Zayn is a librarian who takes pride in the Pokemon Gym that is his workplace. That is, until a certain someone starts making a habit of winning it off him every damn day.

Give Me All Of Your Pokèballs by WritingProseAnythingGoes | T | 5309 "What do you mean by 'my house is on a PokeStop'? No, you cannot come in. I don't know who you are. Now please get off my property." Louis bit his lip in frustration. This dude's house was the closest PokeStop he could find and he wouldn't let him even stand close enough to get more balls. "C'mon, please? I can show you how to play too, you'd like it, especially because your house is dead center with the only PokeStop for miles." Louis begged. The guy narrowed his eyes to slits, scrutinizing Louis closely. "How do I know you aren't gonna murder me or some shit?" Louis sighed plaintively. "Seriously, dude, just let me stand in your living room for ten minutes. I won't even move, I'll just stand there, but I swear to God I'm not gonna murder you. Please." or, a short fic where Louis and Harry fall in love because Pokemon Go is a thing.

Of Thunder and Lightning [series] by gmartini | T | 5598 More than just the Pokémon spark up the battlefield when Niall Squared end up in the Pokemon League Championship match.

Take Me To Your Heart by dinosaursmate | E | 6112 Harry blinked at him for a second, and shit, they made eye contact. “Never gonna give, never gonna give…” the man sang, pointing at Harry to sing the next line. “Come on, curly!” Harry wasn’t sure whether or not to indulge him. He just wanted to go back to sleep, but he knew from experience that sometimes, ignoring lively drunks did not make the problem go away. “Give you up.” Harry replied, before laying his head back against the window and closing his eyes. “Yeah!” The man cried, and to Harry’s despair he sat down next to him. “Had a good night?” “I’ve been working.” Harry mumbled, eyes still closed. “Oh. I’ve got a few days off at the moment, so just been out with my mates. I’m Louis, by the way.” --- London Night Bus AU where all Harry wants to do is sleep, but he has a drunk man singing at him.

here's to never growing up by weddingbells | M | 8195 Every year a ship leaves for Slateport City, Hoenn, carrying excited trainers and Pokémon ready for a new world. Louis Tomlinson hopes to be one of them. He just didn't expect the adventure to start as soon as he gets on that ship, but it does.

pokémon au [series] by dearmrsawyer | G | 22177 Harry gets a part-time job at the Pewter City Pokemon Centre to earn some money for his travels and Louis could not be less thrilled. A Pokemon AU featuring OT5 friendship, the ethics of Pokemon training, and a few possible extra-terrestrials.

Just Me, Him, and the Sun and Moon by SadaVeniren | M | 45502 Alola!! You have formally been chosen to participate in the FIRST EVER Pokemon World Championship Tournament. We have not made this selection lightly and have weighed your many years as a master pokemon trainer and pokemon friend in our decision to extend this offer to you! We hope that you will accept our offer and join us at the Hano Grand Resort on Akala Island! The tournament will take place starting on May 15, but we request that you join us on May 13 to partake in an opening ceremony. The tournament will last two weeks, and accommodations will be provided for you and your pokemon, but transportation to the island will not (so bring a flying type!) We hope you join us!! Professor Kukui --- AKA a gratuitous Pokemon AU featuring farmer!harry, professor!louis, paradise, pokemon battles, love, and the fate of the world

[ncsdlr]

Hit List

The Unfulfilled

Marvel

Warnings: Angst, making out, death, implied trauma, emotional pain, grief, crying, killing, failed love(?), unrequited love(?), mutual pining, manipulation

Pairings: Natasha Romanoff x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 4501

A/N: This has been in my drafts for literally almost a month. I literally finished it then sent it to my friend for proofreading then thought I might add some more stuff, so now here I am after adding said stuff. The added stuff was not proofread.

-----------------

"Your next assignment." Natasha scanned the nearly blank page with her earthy green eyes, reading its contents with pure curiosity and determination. She was the best of the best in her high ranking, and she would be damned if she let that title slip through her nimble fingers. Natasha walked out of her workplace with a pep in her step with the things she would need in her purse. 

Namely, chapstick. 

As Natasha drove to your home, the energetic music of Sia playing on her car radio. The redhead opted to listen to the great Sia when on missions, seeing as she offered her strangely calming vibes. Natasha judged the way your Czech Republic home looked. It definitely needed some upgrades. The crack in the walls seemed so unsafe and the peeling paint too? So unfashionable. Natasha grunted at the hideous design of your building. It was so outdated. You surely could have done way better. Natasha wished on every existing dandelion on earth that you would, at least, be her type. She needed to have fun while working. 

****

"So what do I have to do e-exactly?" You rubbed at your chest as it began to tighten around your heart. This gorgeous woman could be the death of you. Literally. The two of you walked up the seemingly never-ending stairs of the Fraternity she worked in. You don't even know if you were roped into this job by her eyes or the promise of becoming better, but honestly, you sort of didn't even care. 

Sort of.

In a world where what you can become is very limited, this was a bright opportunity for you. You thought of Natasha's proposition as something that can open new doors for you. All you could think of was the prospect of doing something good in this world while having fun in return, that and the part where you were going to be trained too. 

"All you have to do, for now, is get trained. Then, once you're deemed ready by yours truly, you will be given an assignment that you must complete." Natasha walked around a table and you followed suit only to realize that the two of you walked in a circle around it twice before a man with whitened hair in a black suit with his arms behind his back revealed himself. "Then after that, you get more assignments, more targets, more responsibilities-"

"Wait, wait, targets? What does that mean?"

"She means you will be one of us. A killer taking down other killers." The man in the black suit says looking completely unbothered by the whole occurrence.

"Wha- a killer who kills kille- hold on." You raised both your hands and basked in the silence they allowed you to have and thought about everything going on at the moment. After a solid few minutes, the only thing you could come up with was, "So a hero?"

The pair before you sighed, one of them pinching the bridge of her nose and the other raising his eyebrows to his hairline while his eyes squeezed tight, both in an attempt to gather their bearings with how...slow you were. This is going to take so long, she's lucky she's pretty, Natasha thought. 

"No, Miss Y/L/N, not a hero. More of a vigilante with a twisted morale."

The way Natasha said so nonchalantly made your eye twitch, the glint of your eyes showing both confusion and understanding at the same time. Then, all of a sudden, you find yourself in a knife battle with a butcher who seems to have it out for you in a room full of hanging gutted pigs. He used his knives against you rather carelessly to the point where you were actually bleeding from three knife wounds. One on your side, one on your arm, and one on your back.

You were going to pass out. 

****

After two months' worth of on-and-off dedication to this new thing Natasha offered you, your decision is finally whole. You were in. And you celebrated that with Natasha by way of completing a mission and going for dinner afterward. It was all so much fun to hang out with Natasha in such an intimate way while still keeping it professional. She was such a lovely soul to get to know. Anybody would be lucky to know her wholly. 

"So how do you feel?" Natasha eyed you through the burger she was taking a bite of as she asked you her query. She was so adorable.

"Honestly, fulfilling, but still kind of mixed. I just don't know what these people did, if they were bad people, if they were involved in the wrong kind of business, or if they had families. I mean, how do we know for sure we're doing the right thing here?" 

Natasha chewed and swallowed before she spoke again. "The work we do has a questionable judgment, yes, but how we see it is that by taking out one person, we save possibly a million. The result is what we put our faith in, not the work itself." 

"That's beautiful." You smiled at Natasha gently as the night dragged on. When the two of you were walking back to the Fraternity, you could swear that Natasha's hand kept brushing yours, but with how closely the two of you were walking, you dumbly let it slide and deemed it to be a coincidence. 

It really couldn't be anything, right? I mean, you just killed a guy- very skillfully, might I add -so, surely this soft moment can't be happening. Plus, Natasha Romanoff is just a very flirty all-work type of gal. She didn't exactly strike you as the type to commit, so you figured it's best to hold off on that... stuff.

What a fucking day.

****

Another month flew by and now you were three missions deep into this Fraternity including your first "celebratory" mission. It was all exhilarating, to say the least. Everyone on the team had their special talents and reasons for working with this Frat, and everyone got along with everyone. They were all good people, especially Natasha. She had such a golden heart with a thick, strong glass barrier. 

Truly, you've grown fond of this team over the past three months, and to call them your extended family would be a rightful title for them. They were all so caring. They treated each other like brothers and sisters, born with the same blood, and protected each other even if it meant losing their own lives or getting hurt themselves. 

You saw that for yourself once, and to say that you were honored would be the greatest understatement of the fucking year. It happened on a mission where all of you were required to fight the same battle as one. You were fighting one of the enemy goons and you were too busy to see that one guy was aiming at you with a rifle. One of your peers took the shot for you, using his body as a shield for you while simultaneously shooting at your perpetrator. 

Your bond with them solidified after that day. Gone were the many trust issues you had with them because now, you had a reason to trust them with your life. You couldn't think about that right now though. Right now, you are a little too preoccupied with planning how to carry out the latest mission assigned to you.

It was a pretty simple mission, one that required you to assassinate one of the guys in a well-renowned company. They were supposed to have a meeting in two days, according to the details you were given, so that's when you were going to make your move. The days passed by rather quickly with you simply moping around the Fraternity and training when you felt like it. You called it "strength preservation".

****

You stood on a moving train with Natasha sitting comfortably parallel to you with your gun in hand. You were checking if your gun needed anything more while you waited for the right moment to shoot your victim. You playfully aimed your gun at Natasha who merely smirked back at you. You thought it was sadistic, how being held at gunpoint made her reflect a toothy grin. It filled you with butterflies.

As your target's building came closer, you made no move to aim away from Natasha. You wore a sinister smile, one that was reflected beautifully by Natasha, and when the time was right, you pulled the trigger. With the way you were trained in the Fraternity, you learned how to bend the bullets you shot. Therefore, when you brought your arm back, and swung it back at Natasha, your bullet went straight through the window of the meeting room where your target was located, hitting him right in his stupid heart. Perfectly untraceable. 

As opposed to Natasha's previous position on the roof of the moving train you stood upon, leaning back on her hands while one of her legs rested and the other was propped up, now, she was applauding you for your successful mission. You looked at her with a bright shy smile weaving your fingers through your hair while you calmly walked closer to her and sat down. 

"Learned from the best." You stated proudly.

"Yeah, you did."

"Way to ruin the moment."

A blissful silence befell the two of you, leaning back to watch the sunset over the horizon of Russia. It was beautiful. You had just killed someone and now you were watching the day slowly end. It was somewhat peaceful as opposed to the chaos happening in the meeting room where their dead boss lay limp in his chair. You would have laughed if you saw the people running around in a panic. Meanie.

It was a moment where two assassins, you and Natasha, got to pause the world on a moving train. It was unsafe, but the thrill of it gave both of your hearts the flutter it needed. As you looked at the setting sun, Natasha's eyes, unbeknownst to you, turned to your side profile. She could get used to staring at you, your sculpted nose, your voluptuous lips, and the subtle shine in your pretty eyes. Gosh, you looked so beautiful, ready to be ravished by way of flowers and chocolates and surprise dates. 

But Natasha knew she couldn't. With her initial agreement with the Fraternity leader and how you came about, she just couldn't. Not even if she tried.

****

Another day, another mission for you where Natasha was monitoring. She wasn't really required to monitor you, you both knew that, but it just felt right to be near each other so neither of you ever mentioned it. As opposed to the other places you went to with Natasha after missions, this time the two of you laid upon a random blanket the two of you found in the park. When you found it, Natasha insisted on shaking it off before taking a seat on it, saying that there could be bugs on it for all you knew. 

You complied, of course.

The two of you watched the stars, occasionally pointing out constellations you would see in the sky or stars that formed a funny shape- the latter was your doing most of the time. It was calming to both of you how the stars just twinkled above your bodies while you gazed into each other eyes- when did that happen?

At the moment, the moon hosting and the stars watching, the two of you held a silent conversation, one that was had through your eyes that have seen many troubles before each other. As you looked at each other, the world simply faded, quietly and stealthily, leaving only the two of you on a random blanket in the park. 

Suddenly, -you don't know how- Natasha was on you, straddling your lap while cradling your face in her hands so gently. It almost seemed like she feared your head would shatter if she handled you incorrectly. It felt so nice, so right, so meant to be. It was like you only knew each other and nothing else like the two of you existed in a void where you were each other's light in the dark. The warmth between your bodies grounded you enough to keep you both reminded of the place you were in, not that the two of you paid any attention to that. 

Then it happened. In the blink of an eye, the two of you lip-locked. Your soft lips on Natasha's plump ones. It felt so good to finally have each other like this. This was the moment the two had been waiting for; a moment where hands wandered over each other's bodies, feeling each other up as if it would be the last time. 

That night, no intercourse was had, but rest assured, love was made. Love was made in the form of soft gliding hands, gyrating hips, connected lips, shared warmth, and hands held tight. Love was made in ways of fingers running through hair, whispered praises, eye contact, and hugs. More kisses were shared throughout the night. Stolen or not, they were most definitely shared.

No word was muttered after that soft moment. Neither of you expected anything to happen too, but you did hope. The two of you hoped that one day, you could work something out, talk about the things that the two of you needed to talk about and get together. Because that's what the two of you wanted; to be together. It didn't matter how long it took, all you knew, at that moment, was that you wanted each other. 

And that would be enough until it wasn't.

****

How did we get here? 

Ah, yes. 

It all started when you were on another mission and your target had a loose mouth. He flapped his tongue and sputtered out nonsense about the Fraternity you worked for and your MIA father. Frankly, you didn't care about your dad's whereabouts, you'd gotten over that years ago in therapy, but the fact that your target knew of your father's gambling and his drinking, and his abusive nature when he was around, struck a nerve. Other than talking about your sometimes dad, your target also spoke of your beloved Fraternity friends. You, honestly, would have been offended for them if not for the way that things panned out.

"You think they're all good? You think they're all clear skies and glitter?" Your target fell on his back as you kicked him in his chest in the dark alleyway. The way he was gasping for air told you you were doing a pretty good job in defeating him. 

"No, I don't, but it's the result that we put our faith in and not the work itself." Natasha stood proudly behind you with her arms crossed over her chest, the smirk she wore shining with success in bending your morals to be more aligned with them. "Of course, there's always something bad in the things we do, but by taking those people out, we might be saving millions of other people."

You held your target down by his throat, cutting his breath off to the point of death before he tried to speak up again. You meant to taunt him, but his next stuttered words tickled your malleable heart. "...they lied to you. They were the ones- *cough* who had your father...killed."

Your grip loosened at the last second- or so you thought because the second you let go, your target's eyes made its final close. You slowly blinked, your thought process going a mile per minute. Little bits of information and your own opinions tossed themselves around in your head effectively sending you into overdrive. This was it, Natasha thought, the Fraternity's downfall. You were their best asset and their worst enemy, even she could admit that, and now was the time she finally completed her mission. 

Natasha aimed her gun at you, seemingly unbothered. The love she held for you, the love she put aside, the love she wished she could express was raging inside her beating heart. Tears threatened her stoic eyes at the thought of having to be the one to kill you. You were her one true love, you both knew it and now she had to be the one to kill you. It was her mission. You were her mission. She had to complete her mission. 

In some twisted way, she did. Natasha completed you wholly. When you were with her, everything felt right. It was like the world was suddenly a paradise where problems did not exist. With her, the world was a place where nobody knew what the word trouble meant. Natasha made you want to express your love for her, by way of holding her hand, kissing her cheek and her forehead, dancing in the rain with her, crying with her, hugging her, and doing everything good with her. You wanted to take her out on a date in the park, painting each other's portrait or the starry sky, in the fair where you would win her the biggest teddy bear, in a museum where you would only look at her because her beauty topped those of the ones hanging on the walls. 

But that could never happen, right? It was only in your wildest dreams. It could never happen in real life. This world was not a place where your 'I love you's' were said aloud. This was merely a world where it was observed from afar how you cared for each other. This was only a world where stolen glances and stolen kisses were thrown around, hopeless pining was the only way to go, a world where longing eyes met eyes of sorrow and pain. It could never happen, not with the way the two of you were brought into this world. Maypahs if everything happened differently, if the two of you met under different circumstances, it could have happened. 

"Is it true?" 

"Yes."

****

Natasha staggered her way through the Fraternity's gates, clutching at her bag of items limply as she focused on her goal. She wore a solemn look on her face, a look that matched her dirtied clothing, dust and splatters of blood decorating her otherwise white tank top. "We trained her well." Muttered the woman in question as she passed her boss. 

In the bath, Natasha wallowed in her own sorrows, the loud silence enveloping her whole while she soaked in the cold water. In the end, she couldn't do it, not to you. She loves you too much to lose you to her own hands. If it were any other person, she would probably be fine, but this was you we were talking about. You were the person she would love, and no hands will ever be able to hold her down. You were the kind of person she would risk her work for, her life, and her achievements, and that was when she realized.

Natasha loved you too much to kill you. It was like gravity was working in your favor to make her fall in love with you every time she looked at you. Natasha loved the look in your eyes when you finally learned how to curve your bullets. Natasha loved the way your eyes shined when she first held your hand in that crowd when the two of you went undercover. The two of you were partners in crime, and the two of you secretly wished to be partners in real life. So she spared you because she knew that she would never be able to kill you.

----

Your next goal now that everything was out was to go on a rampage. You'd gotten a list a few missions back where one name was particularly questionable. You asked your boss about it, but all he offered was a "Go finish your mission." So you did, but you chose not to kill the one person on the list. You could not kill Natasha Romanoff, not even if you were fully capable of defeating her. 

You loved her too much to kill her. It was almost like love at first sight, how you fell in love with her. Your heart just felt like it skipped a beat and even you could feel the way your eyes dilated fully. She became your everything so quickly that you experience whiplash, but if you were being honest, you would go through it all again if it meant you get to be with Natasha. In the little time you spent with her after missions and the stolen glances you sent her, you fell in love.

You fell in love with how she carried herself with so much confidence. You fell in love with the sparkle in her eye and the way she looked at you like you were the only two people in the world. You love her in soft looks and cuddles, you loved her in ways that only meant the gentlest of love. You loved Natasha in tight hugs and kisses that made you want to do a cartwheel. You love her so much that you spared her of the fate the Fraternity gave her. You loved her too much to lose her to your own hands. 

****

Your plan was set into motion and the Fraternity members' fate was coming to fruition. You got through the building, going higher each time you completed a floor. You shot through men and women alike, these were the people you used to call your friends, family even, but now it was like a switch went off, you didn't know them anymore. You made a war cry through the pain of losing your friends to your own hands, having lost all sense of sensitivity to their pain. 

You don't care, you couldn't care. You haven't cared since the moment you found out it was them who had your father killed through you. You hadn't cared even when you were coming up with this plan to kill all of them and escape with the love of your life so that you could live what could be and what should be between you and her. Your plan was well-thought-out, you were certain nothing could get in the way of its impending success. But with how things are going down right now, you, surrounded by all of the highest ranking assassins you worked with and called your family, on the top floor of the Fraternity. 

Natasha was among the circle, one of the friends pointing their gun at you. She was using your favorite gun of hers too, an M16. She always looked so hot using the gun. And right now, she looked especially hot with that black tank top paired with army green cargo pants - the two of you bought together after one of your missions - and the brown holster around her small waist, the waist you so desperately wanted to wrap your strong arms around. 

"You are all each other's mission. Wanda, and Bruce are spared and recruited by Tony, Natasha, spared and recruited by Clint, Sam, and Bucky, spared by Steve, and Yelena, was spared by Kate. Now, you were spared by Natasha. All of you are supposed to be dead if not for me! If I had not started this Fraternity and made a place where all of you could be protected, you would all be dead!"

The lot of you remained silent as the man you surprisingly saw as a father preached about how he was the all-mighty one for saving all of you and giving you a home. I mean, yes he did do all of that, but was it really necessary to use all of you for reasons such as 'he saved you'? The answer was a hell no.

"Well, now since you're all grown-ups, I'll let you go and let you decide for your own fate." None of them, in the circle, stood down, holding their positions while contemplating how they were going to decide between killing the newest, best, and brightest and sparing you like they did each other. Apparently, none of them had to decide because Natasha beat them all to it. None of them deserve the life they were born with, trauma-filled childhoods, and painful coming-up stories. Everyone in this room deserved something better, something greater. 

As Natasha swung her arm back and shot a curved bullet, she smiled at you. The few memories the two of you created together swam her head like a slowed-down timelapse. The man beside her went down first, and then the next one, then next, and the next. While her bullet was curving in a circle, Natasha tossed her gun to you, and you caught albeit fumbling before it settled perfectly in your hands, and you thought all would be well. 

As the Fraternity members realized their fate, they stayed put in their spots, concluding that the life they had led was the best life they had ever had. They were thankful for all of their flaws and perfections, they were thankful for all of the decisions they've made leading up to this. Natasha thought of you, only you. Natasha thought about the drive she spent going to your workplace, she thought about the months she spent convincing you and training you to be the best you could be in the Fraternity. Natasha thought about all of the sunsets she watched with you sitting atop moving trains. Natasha thought about what could have been, the life she could have lead with you. 

As the last man fell, you held Natasha's gun in your hands and aimed at the oncoming bullet only to watch as the aforementioned bullet lodged itself into the love of your life. You wailed as you saw your mission fail. No longer could you run away with Natasha because now you ran to her limp and bleeding body. You held the love of your life in your arms, offering her your warmth and showing her the love you kept hidden from her for so long. You held her head against your chest, letting her listen to your heartbeat while your thoughts ran wild with the thought of what could have been with her. The love you held for each other died out with her and you sobbed, wailed, and cursed the land you lived upon. 

With no emotions left in your heart and a stoic face, you marched down to where your boss was, blinded by the rage and the pain you felt for losing your lover. With no more thought, you shot him, right in his shiny, half-bald head and watched him fall to the ground with a thud. You felt no remorse as you left the building, ready to live your life with incurable pain and guilt.

Your days passed knowing you could have saved her had you been quicker. 

In pain, you were born, and in pain, you died, next to your lover's grave two weeks later. "I love you." You muttered as your last dying breath devoted itself to Natasha Romanoff, the love of your disgusting life. 

[blueboyluca]

Some puppy thoughts.

Topaz's potty skills are great. She has had a few accidents inside but it's 100% been on me not timing things right. (I don't know how people do this perfectly. I try really hard and I still mess up a lot and she ends up peeing inside.) This morning I left the backdoor open and she went outside by herself and peed, so I think she has got great skills on her own, she just needs help with access. The other great thing is she doesn't take five hundred years to go either, often she'll go right away. This was what drove my crazy with Marcie as a puppy, she would take forever to actually go and in the middle of the night I couldn't cope.

Yesterday I looked in my blog's archive and saw I was taking Marceline out to parks and the beach at 12 weeks but I don't understand why I wasn't concerned about parvo when this time around I'm feeling really paranoid about it? Something about my state of mind? It's also been hard taking Topaz out when I have three dogs now, not two. Just the logistics of three is a lot harder. Which is kind of why I want to treat it as two sets of two rather than one set of three.

But even though Topaz hasn't been to many "dog places" yet, she's been to lots of other places. Her socialisation list so far:

the vet once

a hardware store once

in the car a million times

at work almost every day for three weeks (in an industrial area and in a two storey office, so multiple different areas and sounds/sights/people)

my mum's house a number of times

my sister's house once

one walk in a trolley (gave up on this after one try because she kept jumping out)

five different parks

a cafe once

one puppy class at a primary school

met my mum's two adult dogs

met my sister's adult dog

met my colleague's adult dog

I think that's pretty good for three weeks. Topaz has had more variety in socialisation than either of my other two dogs had. But I do think I need to take her to a couple of my regular dog places so she can get used to them. I also haven't taken her anywhere with heavy foot traffic or where other dogs could be seen. So this weekend I am going to take her to two high traffic public areas so she can watch.

Puppies are really hard and I am really struggling, but what keeps me going is that she will inevitably get older and it will get easier. Once I can safely bring her to training on Tuesdays and Thursdays it will make it loads easier. I still haven't done much training with her. I am really exhausted before and after work and any extra energy I have I try to give to Luca and Marcie so they aren't neglected. It has gotten easier since Marcie and Topaz became friends though, because they spend the evenings playing together.

Topaz is an easy puppy overall and she's much adored in my workplace. If she maintains this temperament as she matures, I think she will easily become the fan favourite of my dogs. She's a lot more friendly and a lot less aloof than Luca and Marcie, but I know that could change. Marcie really changed; once she was an adult, she became more reserved.

She also sleeps through the night every night! So no complaints there.

[b3ach-bunn7]

CHOCOLATE BARS AND SLIDES pt 2

It’s late after you and Sero finish work, so you invite him back to your place

No quirk au, Workplace au, friends to lovers

a few people requested a part two and for some reason I struggled so bad to write it… idk if this is god but plz enjoy!

—————————————————————————

You wake up in a car that’s definitely not yours.

You guess you’ve been kidnapped. If having to stay up all night at your office wasn’t annoying enough, now this? There’s a cat shaped air freshener and dice tied to the rear view mirror, and the car itself is much too fancy for anything you’d drive. There’s takeout boxes on the seat in the back and a bag you recognise as your own by your feet.

So you were kidnapped and robbed? Oh, it was not your day.

Or night, you realise, as you look out the window and see that it’s pitch black. The streets of your town are pretty empty, the streetlights not even on and you glance at the dashboard and see that it’s two in the morning. You think about screaming, but you need to see what you’re dealing with. Then you turn to your left and your kidnapper is Sero, of all people. One hand hangs out the open window and the other is on the steering wheel, finger tapping along to whatever random song is playing on the radio. You think this might be the most attractive you’ve ever seen him, wind rustling strands of his hair across his face. You can only imagine how awful you look. You’re sure you wiped drool off the side of your mouth a second ago. Sero must sense the movement because he glances at you, a small smile gracing his lips. You’re too sleepy to have any shame so you keep staring and don’t notice the reddening of the tips of his ears.

“Good morning. Or good night, I guess.” He laughs.

“I thought we were working, what happened?” You speak through a yawn.

Sero bites his lip. He debates something in his head before he relents.

“Look, I’m really sorry, but you wouldn’t wake up and we’d finished working and I knew we had to leave so I had to carry you out the place, and even then you didn’t wake up and so I thought you were like, dead or something. But you were just asleep. And I was going to wake you up when we got to yours but you sorta woke up alone, right now. Which is weird, because I literally carried you down a flight of stairs and you were knocked out.” The words come out rambled and all at once with Sero’s eyes trained on the road.

You grin at the panic on his face. “It’s okay, Sero. Don’t need to look so horrified. I don’t mind.”

He rolls his eyes as you laugh at him. You’re not mad he carried you out. If anything you’re more annoyed you weren’t awake to enjoy it.

“Well I can do it again if you’d like.”

Oh, you did not mean to say that out loud. You laugh nervously and sit up straighter.

“Never mind that. Wait, so where are you headed?”

“Your place, no?” Sero says, “I was going to drop you off, remember?”

You nod. “Oh, right. But. It’s really late, and you live a bit far so. You can sleep over if you want. At mine.”

The car is silent apart from the radio singing old 80s hits. You swallow roughly. It seems the lack of sleep has caused your filter to disappear and you consider the cons of jumping out the car to avoid the embarrassment of your suggestion..

“I mean, you don’t have to-“

“Sure. I’ll sleep over. If you’re sure you don’t mind.” He cuts you off.

“Of course! I mean it’s the least I can do, after you ditched all your friends to help me cause I deleted all my slides.”

He snorts. “I still can’t believe you did that.”

You shake your head, leaning back on the car seat. The car smells like Sero. “Don’t even. I’m still recovering. I’m never using Google slides again.”

Sero laughs and it makes you smile. He’s so cute. And that hoodie looks really good on him. And you should really stop staring at him because you’re slightly delirious and apparently that means you have loose lips, and you’re sure you’ll say something stupid again.

Sero pulls into your parking lot soon enough. He rests his arm on the back of your chair as he reverses into a parking spot and you think you could die happy right there.

You make him wait outside your door as you run around your apartment and clean up. It’s still sort of a mess but it’s clean enough for you to let him in. It’s not like he hasn’t seen it all before, but still. You need to keep some semblance of dignity after he saw you drooling in your sleep.

“Okay, so you can take my bed, and I’ll take the couch.” You say.

Sero shakes his head. “No, it’s your bed, babe, I’ll take the couch, I don’t mind.”

“No, you’re my guest. I can’t let you sleep on the couch.”

“Well I can’t let you sleep on the couch.”

“We can sleep together.”

You curse yourself the minute the words leave your mouth. Sero grins as your cheeks flush red, raising one eyebrow.

“Can we really?”

“Shut up.” You turn away so he can’t see your face burning up as you walk into your kitchen.

“Aw, don’t be shy. Is that why you invited me over?” He drawls, voice dropping as he teases you.

“Sero, I’ll make you sleep on the floor!” You splutter, busying yourself with getting two glasses of water.

“Don’t worry, I’m only joking.” Sero sits down on the couch, yawning loudly.

“I can’t believe we have to be back at work in like, four hours.”

You groan at his words, walking out the kitchen with the glasses. You pass one to him and he nods his thanks. “I know. And I have to present those slides too.”

“You’ll be fine, babe, don’t worry about it.”

“I’m too tired to worry right now.” You mumble.

Sero huffs a laugh. He drinks from the glass, and you watch as a drop of water slides down his chin, down his neck to the surprisingly defined lines of his collarbones. You wonder if you would’ve felt them when he picked you up before.

“I look that good drinking water?”

Your eyes snap up to his where they are trained on you. “Mhm. I can’t get enough.”

It’s meant to be a joke. But the two of you sort of just stare at each other for a moment, his fingers collecting condensation from the glass, and it doesn’t feel very funny.

“Well. I’ll go get you something to sleep in. Something comfier.” You shoot up out your seat and rush into your room.

You don’t know what’s the matter with you. Of course, a part of you thinks Sero might like you back. You’re sure he’s been flirting with you for the past few weeks. But you’re too scared to ever bring it up, because the chance that he rejects you is too scary for you to even try. You guys were such good friends that you know you’ll never risk losing that.

You dig around in your drawers for some clothes. You find the bag of old boyfriend stuff you keep in the depths of your closet and pull out a pair of sweats and a shirt. You walk back into the living room and Sero is deep in thought on the couch, eyes trained on the floor.

“You alright there?” You ask, tilting your head.

He looks up at you. There’s a weird sort of look on his face, one of determination. He gets up and shoots you a smile.

“All good. Thanks for the clothes.”

In one swift motion he pulls off his hoodie and grabs the shirt out of your hands. Your mouth gapes. Your fantasising was right, because Sero is ripped. Lean muscles and what you think is a six pack. God have mercy.

“I gotta put this shirt on but you can take a picture if you wanna stare any longer.” Sero teases.

“Shut up.” You shove the sweats in his arms.

You quickly wash up in the toilet and go get in bed. While Sero gets ready with the spare toothbrush in your sink, you quickly send a message to your friends telling them what’s happening. They know about you ever-growing crush on him and even though you know they’re all asleep, you shoot them a message with way too many emojis and way too much excitement. Sero walks in soon after and pauses at the light switch.

“You want me to turn it off?”

“Yes, but-“ You’re cut off as he suddenly turns it off.

You curse, scrambling around your bed in the dark for your phone. You turn your flashlight on and point it at his face.

“I was going to say wait until my light is on!”

Sero laughs. “Are you serious?”

“Yes I am serious. It’s too dark in here.” You reach across your bedside table and turn on your lamp. It’s small and inoffensive enough that you can sleep with it on. You tell Sero as much and he laughs at you again.

“Aw, are you scared of the dark?” He pouts and you throw a pillow at him.

“Leave me alone. I watched the conjuring yesterday and I’m freaked out.” .

Sero is still sort of just standing in your doorway. He almost looks too frightened to make direct eye contact with your bed and you grin.

“It’s okay. I don’t bite.” You pat the side of the bed you’ve left for him.

“Shame.”

You roll your eyes. “Shut it and come sleep. I’m tired.”

You shuffle under your duvet, and sigh happily. Sero gingerly climbs in next to you and you huff, dragging him onto it properly. “Come on, this is fun! Like a sleepover!”

“What do girls even do at sleepovers?”

“We kiss all night and talk about boys.” You fan a hand in front of your face and he snorts.

The two of you are now laying down and the room delves into silence. You can just about make out his face with the little light from your lamp, and it bathes him in a warm glow you think makes him look so soft. He’s looking straight up at your ceiling and you reach out and brush a strand of hair off his forehead. His eyes meet yours, and you smile slightly.

“Sorry. It was in your eyes.” The hair has definitely moved out of his vision but you wrap it around your finger.

“I love your hair, you know. When you tie it up in a little bun.”

“Thanks.” His voice comes out slightly hoarse, and you let the strand fall from your grasp.

You dig under the covers and grab your phone. “You mind if I’m on my phone for a bit? I need my phone time before I sleep.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Originally, you’re laying on your back, phone resting on your chest, Sero still looking up at your ceiling. But then Sero mumbles that he can’t sleep either, and he turns to face you, eyes also trained on your phone. And somehow, in the minutes that pass with you scrolling through your Tik Tok, your head is resting on Sero’s shoulder and your hand holds your phone up on his chest. His head rests on top of yours as the two of you lull yourself to sleep with the random things that come up on your page.

But then your phone vibrates, and a notification pops up at the top of the screen. It’s weird enough that anyone is up this late, but then you read who it’s from and what it says and then you feel bile rise up your throat.

Because it’s your friend Miriko, who would of course be up at three in the morning, who also has the most inappropriate tongue out of anyone you’ve ever met. The first notification is tame enough.

“FUCKING FINALLY”

You’re sure Sero reads it but he doesn’t say anything. You guess there isn’t that much he can say, it’s inconspicuous enough.

“HAS ANYTHING HAPPENED DID HE ASK U OUT FINALLYYYYY???”

That one’s more suspicious. But again, it’s notifications from a group chat, so you hope your lack of reaction is making it seem like she’s not replying to you. You slide the notification away.

“You don’t wanna answer?” He asks and you shake your head.

“Nah, she can wait till morning. It’s too late to socialise.”

And then, the last message comes through.

“Are you not answering because manbun is dicking you down rn…”

You sit up suddenly, pulling your phone out of his line of sight. You curse under your breath quickly clicking on do not disturb. You turn to Sero to try play it off but he’s sat himself up too, and he’s looking at you with a weird look of anticipation. The two of you are a hair away from being too close, and your eyes flit around his face, soft from sleep but so focused on you.

“Manbun? Is that supposed to be me?”

Your eyes dart from the bun he’d tied into his hair literally minutes ago in front of your eyes.

“No.” You try to lie half-heartedly but he’s not stupid.

“Yes. It is, isn’t it?” Your silence is answer enough for him.

“So. When your friend said finally and if I asked you out, you- You want me to ask you out?” He breathes, and he says it like more of a statement then a question.

“I- You weren’t meant to see those messages.”

Sero looks down. You curse Miriko a thousand times in your head. You rub your eyes, brain scrambling to find a way out of this. His silence is answer enough for you, and you guess all those times you thought he might like you was just Sero being Sero.

“Look, I don’t-“

Sero’s hand on your face distracts you, and if that wasn’t enough, the firm press of his lips on yours is enough to shut you up. Your eyes flutter shut and you lean in closer, hand reaching up to clutch at the shirt of an ex you couldn’t name if your life depended on it. You think this might be a dream, but then Sero’s hand curls around your waist, pulling you impossibly closer, and you make a noise in the back of your throat. It seems to wake Sero up because he pulls back suddenly.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry, I should’ve asked. Before I kissed you, I just- ” He breathes heavily. “I thought. I’ve been waiting-“

“It’s okay. It’s fine. You are manbun. I like you too.” You nod frantically, hands still on him.

“Okay. That’s good.” He nods too.

The two of you sit for a minute.

Sero breaks the silence. “Can I kiss you again?”

“Please.”

He descends onto you quickly, pushing you back onto your bed. His arm rests next to your head as he kisses you, tongue delving into your mouth. You whine and he swallows the sound, his teeth nipping at your bottom lip. He kisses your chin, down your neck, licking at your pulse. You moan as he sucks a mark into your neck and he sighs.

“Sound so beautiful, baby.” He mumbles, hands travelling up under your shirt and skimming the soft skin of your stomach.

You let your own hands explore him, fingers dancing over the lean muscle you’ve been itching to properly look at since you knew they existed. Sero sighs as you trail them up his stomach, across his chest. You reach up and place another kiss on his lips, but he pulls back slightly.

“Wait, wait.” He whispers between the kisses you pepper on his lips between each word.

“What could you possibly need to talk about right now?” You grumble, falling back down on the bed.

He sits up, practically straddling your waist. His lips are swollen and kissed, his hair dishevelled where you’ve no doubt ran your hands through it. It’s taking every ounce of self control not to pull him back down on top of you.

“I just- I feel like I should do this properly. Take you out. Wine and dine you, you know?” The little worry that furrows his brows makes something in your heart ache.

You pat his arm and he takes the hint to slide off your lap. He crosses his legs, running a hand through his hair to get it out his face. His shirt is lopsided and showing half his right shoulder and you fix it for him, hands lingering on him slightly.

“If you wanna do this properly we can. Though I’m perfectly happy to fuck you right now.”

Sero swallows heavily, shutting his eyes. “Fuck me, you’re not making this easy.”

“Well, I am offering.” He rolls his eyes as you giggle.

“Okay then. Tomorrow. After your presentation and after work we’ll go out to dinner. I’ll take you out, that sound good?”

You nod happily. “Sounds perfect.”

“Perfect.”

Sero leans over and presses one more kiss to your lips. Before he pulls away you drag him back, just for a second more.

“Fuck, baby.” He groans, “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

“Please not before our date.”

“No, I’d never. Got to show you what would’ve happened tonight if we didn’t stop so soon.”

[kekstala]

It’s good to see you back again! I’m sad you’ve had such a rough time lately and I hope the days and weeks to come are much better. 🫂

Yeah the past few weeks have been hell - since I've changed my workplace activity.

The project I had been working on got canceled, so my colleagues and myself had to undergo training for another project.

This said project’s like the endboss, because of its difficulty - hence, I came home every day tired and braindead from all the new information the teacher had thrown at us.

 

But hey, school’s finally done now! Sure, the work itself is going to be wonky for the next few weeks, but at least I’m out of turtoring hell lol

 

Also, I read your fanfics, they’ve been great!

My stupid brain had forgotten to mention them before, so I’ll try to save some of my remaining honor by making up this mistake now.

 

GUYS! WHEN YOU READ THIS ASK LOOK AT THEIR FANFICS! THEY’RE AWESOME!

 

I especially enjoyed Fireworks.

(I practically died out of fluffness, and all my teeth are gone now because of it’s sweetness)

 

And Eavesdropper’s also pretty great (I’m just such a sucker for happy future fics aaaaaaaah)

Also, the part where Kieran played a prank on the school brats has been hilarious LOL

 

Thank you so much for asking and for your words <3

Much appreciated!

[weepylucifer]

Esprit de Corps and Inland Empire >:)))

inland empire: if video game Disco Elysium was put in a hydraulic press. if it was bundled and squeezed into a small object that fit in the palm of your hand. what would that look like? what would you do with it, then?

it'd look like a cubical object in scintillating metallic colors and patterns, and images of the locations and characters shimmering across the surface. i would use it as a fidget toy and have it in my hands whenever i need something to occupy them while i read kapital. i would also take it in my mouth

esprit de corps: what are your feelings about the RCM?

oh boy deep breath. under cut because it got long

The RCM is a glorified neighborhood watch. The RCM is old communists trying to trick the Moralintern into letting them stay organized. The RCM are pigs and bastards and bootlickers. The RCM has failed its purpose. The RCM is working exactly as designed. The RCM are trying to protect citizens. The RCM are actively ruining lives. The RCM are gonna back the revolution. The RCM are gonna squash the revolution. No one trusts the RCM and they are right not to. The RCM are doing what they can with what they have. The RCM are just another gang in a city of gangs. The RCM are a sworn brotherhood. The RCM are a vile, toxic, soul-sucking tar pit of a workplace. The RCM are a bunch of delusional weirdos clinging to a figment of legitimacy and “law” that was handed to them by the oppressors. The RCM come from the people. It’s wild out here

The thing about them is that i can absolutely see the in-universe "RCM = ICM + 4 decades of time" theory being true. I can absolutely believe that people in there, like Pryce, are trying to organize another push for independence, and maybe even communism. But the thing is, most people have forgotten all about this, and there are no communards in the RCM anymore (even Pryce is the son of the original Pryce). So by now they're pretty much just the police, not much more to it. They've recruited anyone off the street, which means they've recruited a ton of people with the Cop Mindset, who were drawn to the opportunity to play around with guns and exert authority over defenseless civilians. When the Return comes, the RCM will collapse like a poorly made soufflé, and i do not doubt that we would have seen that in a sequel if there'd been one. There would have been a split into the "serve the people by joining the uprising" camp and the "keep being cops by enforcing moralintern law and suppressing the uprising" camp, and the former would be in for some interesting times

in coup attempts, it can be beneficial to have (para-)military on-side, because they're many, they're armed, and they're trained for combat, and you'd probably prefer them with you than shooting at you. but the people hate the RCM, and the unions hate the RCM, and there are good reasons for that, so for many it would be unacceptable to have cops at the table. plus, from what we've seen of Precinct 41, you do NOT want those bozos in charge of ANYTHING, and you do NOT want a Return that just ends up enforcing police rule. what Pryce and whoever people he has would do when confronted with that, it would remain to be seen

[afriendlywizard]

My review of a warehouse I found on Earth's Moon in the video game Starfield

I work at a cidery in the PNW. We have a pretty hefty canning line that can handle what I like to call a Solid Chunk of Volumetric Output. Our fulfillment and warehouse team touches several hundred pallets a day. We handle ingredients that come in drums, plastic IBC totes, 5 gallon buckets, and raw ingredients off the back of people’s Ford Raptors. We have pipes and valves and connectors. We talk about glycol and peracetic acid a lot. We have standard 4 level pallet racks, as well as push-back pallet racking and back-load pallet racking that maintains a First In First Out order.

I manage our Quality Assurance team, which means I spend most of my team at a desk or in a lab. I have driven our forklifts and our scissor lifts. I’ve blended our ingredients into our batching tanks. I verify our sanitation practices, and I help solve problems as needed. I spend a lot of my day staring at stainless steel pipes and mumbling about dissolved oxygen to myself.

That’s all to say, I’m not an expert. I would call myself a warehouse hobbyist and enthusiast. Not out loud to anyone, but when I play a video game that has a warehouse in it, I like to spend my time looking at how the warehouse is put together.

In addition to this, a note on Forklift Certification: It’s largely made up. There are some machines that require special licenses, and OSHA has classes you can take that probably look good on a resume, but if you look at the language that OSHA uses to define who is allowed to drive a forklift it only has two requirements. “Trained operators must know how to do the job properly and do it safely as demonstrated by workplace evaluation.” It’s up to the employer how that’s interpreted. My employer had me watch a forty five minute video and then someone watched as I drove around for thirty minutes saying “oh fuck oh fuck okay okay okay don’t hit anyone.”

I took my character, Dr. FLIPJUMP DARKSWALLOW, to the moon. I brought my companion Sarah with me, she said she wouldn’t mind a detour so that we could finally live out our shared dream of owning a pair of moon boots, so down we went to explore a seemingly abandoned lunar station. It seemed to be some kind of staging facility for receiving shipments, landing dock, staff kitchen and common area, but as far as I could tell there wasn’t anywhere within a kilometer or two to send the shipments once they arrived. Typical supply chain issues, major distro hub with nothing in site to distro to. But it did have a small on-site warehouse so Sarah and I both agreed to put a pause on our moon boots dream and explore.

This is called an IBC tote. You can fill these up through a big screw-top hole on the top, super easy to use, cheap ($275 new), universal. The most common versions I’ve seen have a galvanized steel cage and a galvanized steel pallet attached to the bottom so it can be universally picked up by a forklift. They typically have a 2” drain valve with a butterfly and a camlock. This is a pretty good example of an IBC tote! You can see how the galvanized steel was welded together at each intersection, bent into place and held there. The butterfly at the bottom has a cap in place, it has a pressure valve that’s clearly labeled. This looks pretty good!

This is a pallet jack. On Earth in the present day, you roll it into the slats on a pallet, squeeze on a hand lever in the handle, and pump the handle bar up and down as it lifts. On the Moon in the future, it looks like it’s been upgraded for use in space with what I assume is probably some electric battery type of deal. Otherwise it’s very similar to a normal pallet jack! It even has the double wheels in the front, a detail I was very excited about. There doesn’t seem to be the hand lever though, or any buttons anywhere. I assume that’s because this model has a voice assistant like an Alexa in it.

It has a spring in the back as well, another neat little detail. I’d be curious to see how this works in action, there’s a decent number of mechanical parts on it for how futuristic it looks. There’s also two small… baskets, I guess? For paperwork maybe? On either end of the handle shaft. I made up the term handle shaft.

Here is what I assume is a future-forklift. And Sarah. Please ignore Sarah. I was required to take her on a mission early on, but she keeps saying things like “that’s not yours!” and “we should not break the law,” which has been definitely cramping Dr. DARKSWALLOW’s style. Anyway, this forklift is a far cry from the kinds we have in present day. Barely recognizable.

My best guess is that you stand on this platform to operate it. But there’s no buttons or levers again, no key ignition. Presumably this turns on somehow and that panel is a touchscreen, or maybe it’s another Alexa operated device. This whole thing seems pretty dangerous. There’s no roll cage. I guess maybe there’s no OSHA in the future? Or maybe this thing has a lot of safety tech built into it to protect the operator from making mistakes. Maybe it follows Asimov’s rules of robotics and can’t allow a human to come to harm, through action or inaction. But that seems like a lot of liability to pack into programming, and it seems expensive to attach a positronic brain to a forklift. I don’t know how it would anticipate other drivers doing things badly, knocking over pallets? It seems dicey.

I do like that the cabling looks like it’s painter’s taped onto the frame so it doesn’t get caught anywhere. That’s a great little detail, very much something a maintenance team might do in a pinch. A “short term hold” as they “work with supply chain details to implement a long term repair.”

I climbed up onto a pile of boxes to get this picture. It looks like they redesigned the forks in the future, kind of a high-heeled shoe thing going on at the ends there. And this forklift seems like it has reduced functionality from what forklifts here on Earth can do. Forklifts can usually do three things with the forks: lift up and down, pitch the forks back and forth, and spread the forks wider or narrower. I think this can only lift the forks up and down. There also seems to be a large orange ball on the bottom, but I don’t know what that’s used for. My best guess, given the short cylinder above it, is that the forks can control their yaw and rotate on a horizontal access? But they’re right up against the axle so I’m not sure how that would work. Maybe if you lift the forks up it’s able to rotate? But I don’t see much of an engine to ballast the center of gravity anywhere. Maybe the entire body is made with a very dense metal, it does seem to be pretty flush with the ground.

My biggest complaint is that this forklift doesn’t have any headlights or taillights. It’s important for forklifts to have a horn and bright lights to let other workers know there’s a forklift around, especially reverse lights. These might be taillights, if I’m giving some benefit here, but they’re so low to the ground I’m not sure how other drivers are going to be able to see them. But I’m not an expert in future light bulbs, maybe these work just fine.

These look like future pallets! Pallets come in different materials, with wood or plastic as the most common, but they also come in standard sizes. But these pallets look like they’re way too small for the forklift to pick up. Maybe they’re just for the pallet jack? And big note here: I really hope for the sake of the warehouse manager in this facility that OSHA doesn’t exist, because each one of those pallets standing up on its side is going to be its own fine. Overall these pallets look pretty good, if small. And this disaster of a pile seems pretty true to form with how pallets are stored, no matter how many @everyone pings on Microsoft Teams you see get sent out about stacking pallets correctly.

I suspect everyone in the warehouse crew here hates their coworkers. They have four of these pallets in a square but are stacking things randomly on top of them. None of these things are strapped down, this black cube is on a pallet that’s a different size than the pallets underneath it. Just a bizarre move. I hope everyone’s doing okay.

And then on the other side is this: … Why? Why would anyone do this? You can’t pick those rolls up, the rest will roll right off the pallet. They’re not centered on the pallet so even if you did pick it up, you couldn’t put this onto pallet racking anywhere, it’s hanging off the edge.

This is pallet racking. It seems bolted together for some reason. I haven’t seen that before on this style of racking. It seems counter-intuitive; the whole point of this type is that it’s easy to put together, it’s modular. But if you bolt it together, it’s not modular anymore. Normally you just slot the pieces in, they fall into place and don’t require additional parts. Just welded steel with drop slots.

Oof. A dead body. I’m a little surprised there aren’t more of these here. It does feel a bit dangerous.

Here’s another pallet jack, but they aren’t using it correctly. The pallet goes into the forks, why did they put a pallet on top of the forks? Ridiculous. Now they’re just lifting things for no reason. A forklift put the pallet on, now a forklift has to take the pallet off? Why use the pallet jack at all?

And lastly: a propane cage! There’s no locks on it, the maintenance team is probably screaming at everyone to make sure they Lock Out/Tag Out their equipment, but I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and sign off on it because there’s no propane tanks inside the cage so maybe the locks just aren’t necessary. Hopefully it’s just in someone’s pocket while they’re going to refill the tanks.

Overall, this is a pretty dangerous looking facility but probably usable. I’d say they ought to start working towards shoring up some safety gaps here, maybe making more intentional decisions about purchases for a while so they have the equipment they need for their process flow instead of all this equipment that requires rework and multiple touches to get anything done. But a growing business sometimes has to take what’s available! Kudos to them for getting things up and running on the moon, not an easy feat.

[astramthetaprime]

State of the Funyun, 9/22/24

So Things Have Happened.

Two weeks ago I got called in to a meeting with my supervisor. The previous two times this has happened I've been threatened with being fired, so I was thinking "here we go" on the walk of doom. But strangely, no! I was offered to transfer to another job in the company that they thought might suit me better. Yeah, I know, "might suit me better" is code for "this is your last chance you failure". I'm not completely oblivious. Even I can see the writing on the wall when it's printed in 108pt neon orange.

I started learning the new job last week and I'm already doing real work. Like, actual real work. Correctly.

I'm being trained by the person who is getting traded to my old department for me and she's a former schoolteacher. I don't hide the autism, I told her when it was relevant. So I get treated like a third grader with getting interrupted to check on me a dozen times a day, which okay, I understand but the frustration at being interrupted when I'm concentrating is something I'm trying my best to control. She's a really nice person and she doesn't deserve that. Also I just don't like feeling like a putz. But I'm working again. After four months of feeling like I was going to be fired at any moment for not being given work to do, it's a vast improvement. No one likes to feel useless and even fewer people like to be made to feel scapegoated for other people's choices. But it is what it is, and I'm glad to be out of it.

Best of all about this new job, once I'm trained I'll be working from home. This is especially welcome as I'm proving less and less able to handle morning and evening rush hour traffic. After about a dozen close calls and near misses, my nerves are frazzled when it comes to driving in the hail of bullets that is rush hour traffic. Where is the shining future of autonomous cars I was promised?

Speaking of, there was a kerfuffle with the windshield wipers on my car lately. The motor that runs the wipers broke, so no wipers. We've been under pretty much drought conditions here at Tranquility House and the surrounding environs for quite some time, we just haven't been getting any rain hardly at all. Seriously, I can't tell you how many times I've seen the entire eastern part of the country covered in masses of storms ... except for this one little blob in SE Tennessee. It's like seeing the effects of some pissed-off wizard curse. Dude, I get you just washed the Audi but dang, have you looked at the lake lately?

Anyway, so because I drive a 17 year old car the repair shop had to order in the parts. Waited and waited, a couple weeks goes by, hot damn they're predicting rain! But! I can't drive in the rain because no wipers. No word from the shop, so I called. They were, shall we say, less than enthusiastic and no word when the parts would be in. I got lucky, it didn't rain as predicted, it still hasn't rained in fact, so no harm done. The part finally did come in, I had arranged to take my car in before I went in to work and use their shuttle service to go the rest of the way in to work. Their shuttles run at 45 minutes past the hour, it's literally 2 miles away, all good, right? Wrong! They just didn't run the shuttle at 745. Just didn't. Even though I'd arranged to take it that morning. And didn't bother telling me.

Yeah so I waited for half an hour and no shuttle so I called an Uber. For a two mile drive. I was almost late for work. My workplace is good about letting folks come in anytime between 6 AM and 9 AM, so it's all good, but I'm used to being there at 8. And was almost late anyway.

And that reminds me, the day before this happened I went to the doctor for the follow up of the two weeks of Adderall I was prescribed because my NP now thinks I may be ADHD. I thought she had prescribed me more Adderall, there was talk about upping the dosage so I thought she had but didn't get the automated "You have prescriptions ready" text from my pharmacy. I physically went to go check and nothing. So I dunno. Maybe she didn't because I told her I felt antsy about it because what if I get pulled over by the cops and I've got half a bottle of Adderall in my bag and it's not medically necessary because I don't have an actual diagnosis for ADHD yet. She told me she'd confirm to the cops it was needed if that ever happened but does anyone honestly believe the cops are going to bother with that? They'd just see another crackhead amphetamin addict and my life would be over. Once you're tarred with that particular brush you'll never get a job again.

If you're not just outright shot by the cops in another "traffic stop that went wrong."

Yeah, so on the whole things are looking up somewhat, call it cautiously optimistic.

[lantur]

mental health stuff,

October marks my four-year anniversary of being in therapy. I have a wonderful relationship with my therapist. She's helped me get through a lot of challenges, from major life stressors like my dad's diagnosis and death, and dealing with my emotionally abusive mother, to dealing with struggles with anxiety, depression, ADHD, workplace issues, etc. 

I've gone from seeing my therapist once a week when I need the extra support, to once a month. She's really happy with the routines and coping skills I've developed, and she joked the other day that she's working herself out of a job - but we won't stop therapy until I'm ready. 

I feel a bit self-conscious about being in therapy for four years, since I don't think most people stay in for that long. Derek pointed out that I was on a great trajectory until last summer when my dad was diagnosed and things took a pretty steep downturn mental health-wise then, which is to be expected. 

I'm really happy with the coping skills I've developed over the years too. I have so many more close friends than I used to, and I know what works for me with regard to managing my ADHD and more or less managing my depression and anxiety. 

One thing I still struggle with is processing my feelings. What I want to do is journal more often, and get my feelings out in between therapy visits. I've used my Tumblr as a journal for 10+ years, which is wild, but I want to be more consistent about it. I write when I'm happy and feeling good, usually at the end of the weekend. 

I want to write more when I'm feeling not so good. And I have been feeling not so good this week. I pride myself on my resilience and my ability to bounce back from difficult, painful situations; on the fact that I can survive and sort-of thrive even in situations that are not ideal. So it's hard for me to admit when I'm not doing so well. I also don't like to dwell on negative emotions, and I choose to emphasize my more positive feelings instead. But I think I have to feel the negative and get it out so I can move on.

I've been having a hard time bouncing back from how bad I felt after my mom's disastrous visit in September. The whole first week after she left, I felt so sad. Last week and so far this week, I've felt so much anger. So much anger over the way she treated me last month, but also last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that… 

It's a bitter and confusing thing to have your own mother, who should love you and support you and encourage and uplift you, treat you like dirt. To deliberately try to hurt you at every turn; to always try to tear you down by saying that you're not doing enough, not giving her enough. I tried so hard, SO HARD, for so many years, to make her happy. I was her therapist at 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, with no mental health training or background, with major mental health struggles of my own, trying to talk her out of depression, out of suicide. 

No matter what I said or did, it was never enough to make her happy. When I finally broke free of that pattern of trying everything to make her happy - after I started therapy - then she started punishing me with escalating emotional and verbal abuse for making my own life choices that didn't align with the life she wanted me to have. 

For a long time, I felt a huge void in my life due to not being able to have a relationship with my brother due to my adoption. Over time, I've done a lot to fill that void, with my wonderful friends, who are like family to me. It's harder to replace my mom, though. She can't be in my life anymore because she has proven herself truly incapable of treating me with kindness, love, and respect. Nobody in my life has ever hurt me more than she has. 

I have so much anger about my mom treating me the way she has, because I deserved better. I was a child and a teenager who didn't know that at the time, but I see it now. I would never treat a child the way she treated/treats me, let alone my own child. 

I admit it makes me jealous when I see Derek and my friends with good relationships with their moms. It makes me aware that I don't have that. A positive, supportive, loving relationship with your mother seems like such a gift. All I get from mine, all I've gotten for years, is pain. And moms aren't "replaceable," I guess. I can't swap out my mom with someone else, the way I kind of have with my friends / my family of choice as my siblings. 

Derek says that his parents think of me like a daughter, which is sweet, but it's not the same. My greatest hope right now is that one day, I can finally have a good experience of a mother-child relationship, with a child of our own. I deeply hope it works out. 

[tigre-edi-rawr]

Bootcamp

I was in training for approximately a month, and it was a wild journey. I heard many stories about how difficult it is, how it has caused people to cry and suffer. But, to be honest, I don't feel the same way. Yes, coping with the overwhelming new knowledge and learnings was really difficult, but I am glad to announce that I overcame it all without crying lol.

There were moments when I felt unmotivated, and all I wanted to do after work was spend time with myself and my hobbies. I watched movies and TV shows, played the piano, went outside, met my partner, and had a good time.

During recitations, I was able to answer questions directed at me. My tasks were completed; however, my quizzes were generally "pasang awa" haha. Overall, it was fine.

After a few days, I was finally able to report at Uptown Tower 3 BGC. Oh, my goodness. The food? FIESTA! I felt like I was at a mall although I had only been in the workplace for 2 minutes. There was a lot to choose from, and I ate at every fast food establishment I could until I was full. Following the first RTO, I went to the hotel I had reserved and stayed there with two colleagues. It was lovely, tranquil, and clean. But I didn't enjoy spending time with them because they are all quiet and calm, which is not my personality. And I rented a non-smoking room, which was hypocritical for a smoker like me because of that I had difficulty coming up and down the elevator only to smoke outdoors.

The next morning, I awoke to find them fully dressed and ready to leave for work, so I hurried, washed, and we walked from the hotel to work. We arrived around 10 minutes later, and that's pretty much how my RTO went. I ate a lot of food, went around the mall a lot, and talked with my co-trainees.

To be honest, I was bored haha.

Case study day….

This is a very clear memory in my head, wanna know why? BECAUSE I WAS ANGRY AF.

What happened was that the defense is on Tuesday afternoon, and our group practiced a little in the morning before that. Little did I know, I'd be a fucking teacher, teaching all the fucking basics and defense material. I felt like I was instructing my niece. I was stunned; we were about to begin an all-or-nothing defense, and these two had wasted their entire weekend waiting for us to teach them what they needed to know? Yes, you guessed correctly. I'm not sure where all the things we taught them went because they can't even answer questions from the panel. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? I am no smart, but fuck, I hate embarrassing myself like that.

I was enraged. I tried my best for the case study, knowing everything I needed to know because that was my job. I sacrificed even if it meant taking on more responsibility only to finish the case study. And I'm going down with these two fucking idiots? Oh no, boo. Sorry, I'm not sorry, but I'm furious. I am still disappointed up to this point.

So, the case study is over, and I'm back on the bench. Deservedly, I require peace and a self-paced setting to repair the anger management issue that these jerks sparked.

Even my mom is telling me to calm down, that's how chaotic it is. Guess I really hate idiots.

[bonyfish]

hi i’m so sorry if this is weird! i saw your post about doing some film archive work and i wanted to ask a little about it if you have the time, like qualifications, education, what the job’s like and how you liked it, etc. i’m finishing up a major in studio art and minor in film right now and my original career plan will not be possible for at least a good while, so i’ve been considering other options. 90% of my experience is in library work so film archiving seemed like a good option!

thank you for taking the time to read and do feel free to ignore this message if you don’t have the time or just don’t want to! have a good day!

Hi! No worries, I don't mind answering questions, though I don't know how helpful my answers will be.

I didn't realize until after making my post about my job that most film archiving jobs do require some sort of qualifications such as a degree or certificate, and that our job not requiring that sort of thing is probably one reason they were able to get away with paying us so little. That said, I've heard similar things about getting library work-- that there are people who get degrees in library science and they are able to be hired to be librarians in an official capacity, but other jobs with similar duties may not require the same training. So maybe you will have resources I didn't, through your experience in library work! It is also possible that I am talking nonsense. To the extent that I had any qualifications, they consisted of 1. an art degree (sequential art), and 2. hands-on experience shooting film and developing it in my sink, but many of my coworkers had no prior experience with film that I know of and just happened to answer the job posting.

I did enjoy my job for the most part, though like any job a lot of the day-to-day experience of it is the people, and it became pretty dull after most of my favorite coworkers moved on and management started getting megalomaniacal about productivity. (I think this sort of thing is antithetical to the practice of conservation but as I've established, my lab was not... standard.) It was really cool getting to work with film every day though, and I got to see some really fascinating things (the Kinsey work, but also old instructional programs and silent films, and very occasionally people's home movies).

My duties involved inspecting the film for damage, cleaning and repairing it, noting down metadata about the film as an object (for example whether it's an original or a print, negative or positive, what film stock, whether it has sound), and then determining the appropriate frame rate and scanning it at our very fancy scanner machines. Sometimes I'd get to do color correction and I really enjoyed that. After that point, scanning usually entailed watching the film at slightly faster than normal speed as it ran through the scanner, and keeping an eye out for any debris we'd missed at a previous stage in the process or anything going wrong with the scanner. Sometimes film would be very warped and that would make scanning difficult; a couple times a film popped clean off the scanner and multiple people needed to hold it in place while one unlucky worker wound it back up by hand. We had special metal plates to hold warped film in place, but sometimes hubris got the better of us and we didn't use them when we should've. Also, they would make horrible rhythmic squeaking noises for the duration of the scanning process.

This was really long but I guess the takeaway is: it's fun work if you can get it, but I have no idea how I got it.

Also: lab safety is very important! If, for instance, your incompetent boss spills a huge drum of perchloroethylene and rushes in to try to clean it up bare-handed with some paper towels, you should perhaps consider calling multiple workplace safety organizations about it. That's what we did.

[catboysooyoung]

Trying to pick apart ORV as a very noob writer hence why I'm reading it very very slowly (it's actually because I've been so busy with work that I can barely breathe these days).

But anyways it's interesting just how much Yoo Sangah's introductory passage reveals her entire character setting. I didn't think much of this beyond the surface reading, as in "oh she's a heroine type who got a lot of unwanted attention because she's pretty and capable, but she's actually more than that, she's determined and independent."

I guess I've unfortunately been looking at her character through hankim's lens lol. But this is good. It means I'm one step closer to understanding her as a "person".

I feel like now that I've understood a fraction of what she's experienced (commuting daily to my full time job and minor workplace issues), I realized just how fucking insane and amazing Yoo Sangah is. It's also... Interesting how quickly she opens up to Dokja about this? I didn't really understand dok/sang before because I thought kdj didn't deserve someone like her (again. Hankim pov lol), but now I do. Despite being supposedly "popular" and "well liked" the workplace harassment she faced must've given her a sense of kinship with the office outcast...

Unfortunately this sentiment is not shared with Dokja, who due to his nature and self disregard, thinks of her as someone so above and beyond him, someone so far away due to her perceived "perfection". As Dokja is a reader by heart, he unconsciously sees her as a character and not a person in his life, and in doing so, rids her of her humanity a bit.

Hence why, though it doesn't necessarily mean that he thought those rumors are true, he must've thought there was some truth to it/the truth must not be too far from it, thus why he felt the need to add that as context. It establishes his limited outsider's perspective on YSA.

I feel like (and I could def be wrong), KDJ isn't necessarily judging her for it, he's just going with the commonly held assumption, and he reads it as something like "oh she's the type of heroine that would be waited on her hands and feet" and such, or something

So when YSA answers him, it's really funny because it really breaks that common assumption. Like, oh. YSA isn't just your good ol' cool heroine.

She's fucking insane.

Because with the way KDJ's narration leads us, or perhaps leads me. I'd think that the less sinister alternative (compared to the implications embedded in the rumors) would be that she's from a well to do family who has someone driving her, or, is able to drive herself.

But no, she fucking commutes to and from work every day on bike. On a fucking bicycle.

I know Seoul probably has bike paths and everything being a major city in a global north country and all that, and maybe her house or apartment isn't that far, but knowing Yoo Sangah, that probably wouldn't even be a problem.

And honestly given the fact that she said she's doing this to make up for the lack of exercise (which means it is something she does regularly too), probably means she'd have traveled either a long way or taken longer routes on purpose, knowing how she is.

Which is insane, to someone like me, who commutes every day by bus/train and has so little time to do much else and am thus probably much closer to kdj than i ever will to YSA.

To bike, to ((exercise)) daily as your commute to work is insane. It takes insane amounts of willpower and dedication. I know she mainly does desk jobs being HR and such but the workload is still a lot

So it just gives me this picture of like, how probably, neatly curated and insanely full YSA's life is, how committed she is.

The only reason she's commuting by subway here, isn't because she got tired or something, it's because her bike got stolen. Which prob means she's so used to doing it everyday that the only thing that would stop her is if something happened to her bike... That's amazing.

YSA is no perfect heroine or gentle woman. She's an insanely dedicated office lady who should also be drawn with the most powerful thighs in the universe. Okay that last one, I got sidetracked because I'm gay sorry. Point is.

Yoo Sangah.

[having-conniptions]

I don't know who needs to read this but you have probably made such a big (positive) difference for someone just by being yourself, just by being kind or even just by being there.

Let me tell you a little story that I've been dying to share because it has impacted me so much.

Half a year ago, I changed workplaces as a trainee because the place that I worked at was slowly but surely eroding my self-confidence, my motivation to do the job I love and my will to keep going. There was one coworker in particular who must have felt threatened by me because I was "only" a trainee but she was "only" part-time help. And she had it out for me. She constantly criticized me, patronized me, berated me, scolded me for mistakes I didn't make and regularly raised her voice at me. The person who was in charge of my training didn't do anything about it and also didn't really know how to train me. Other workers jumped in to fill in those responsibilities but unfortunately those were the ones that were barely there due to health problems or part-time or because they just worked in a different part of the building most of the time.

I sat in my car during my lunch break and cried nearly every single day for weeks. I felt like I was just not good enough, like I could never get it right, like I would never learn what I needed to learn.

Now, I hear you asking, where is the feel-good story you promised?

Well, we had an intern. A 17-year old kid. He was suffering as well, probably as much as I was. He also usually didn't work close to me BUT sometimes we got assigned tasks together that we could do without everyone else looking over our shoulders the entire time. Those were the only times we didn't feel judged or scrutinized or looked down on. We took our sweet time completing those tasks, often goofing off until we thought people might suspect we weren't actually working.

One time, he found two huge bottles of bubble liquid (or whatever it's called) while we were working on something in the pretty isolated break room. He opened one and started blowing bubbles. After approximately 15 seconds of "that is definitely not allowed", I grabbed the other bottle and joined in on the fun. The childlike joy I felt in those five minutes that we spent just blowing and breaking bubbles felt like a freshwater spring in the middle of a desert. That kid really saved me a little bit with those bubbles.

Another time, we were supposed to carry old boxes filled with books and photo albums from one floor to another, and we just started looking through the photo albums and showing each other what we found. It was so mundane but wholesome and most of all it gave us a fucking break from everyone else.

Every time we crossed paths during our regular work we'd vent to each other if we had a couple of seconds alone. He noticed that that one coworker was targeting me specifically and I felt so validated. He told me he couldn't bear working there anymore and I let him know he was not alone.

I don't know if this kid (I'm still calling him a kid even though he should be 18 by now) knows how much he saved me just by being there and being a kid and reminding me that in my heart I was also still a kid. And I hope I managed to return the favor even just a little by being there and listening.

We never talked outside of work and I wouldn't say we were friends but we kept each other going. Saved a little bit of each other's sanity.

I got out of there six months ago and shortly after I left his internship ended. I hope he's okay wherever he is now.

You don't have to be a hero in order to save someone. Most of the time it's enough to be kind and to be yourself.

[anarchosyndicatalyst]

On the Ethics and Morality of AI

There has recently been a lot of debate around the subject of AI in the workplace, so I'd like to get my two cents put down somewhere for our future overlords to read so they know that I was one of the good ones lmao

While there has been a lot of concern over things such as "intellectual property rights" and the exact sourcing of material used to train the more complex and "creative" programs. However a question that I have often seen dismissed is that of the future of robotic manual labor, and the replacement of human workers with machines.

Personally, I'm all for it - well at least in theory anyways. This is literally what the vast majority of Humanity has been building towards since we first settled alongside some big-ass river thousands of years ago. Without the requirement of human labor to produce the essential resources we need to survive (food, water, shelter ect), our society will be free to turn it's attention to the fulfilliment of higher orders in order to raise the standard of living for all.

This is because a world without labour is a world without money. Without survival driving the capitalist cycle of "work -> money -> food/water/shelter -> work", individuals will consequently find more joy in their day-to-day lives, as they will be free in the knowledge that their lives are being lead with intention.

However, I will admit that this view is incredibly optimistic; as the true danger of AI arises from this seemingly utopian future. To borrow Marx's terms, the dispute between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will not end there. Once it becomes clear that labor can no longer be used as a sufficient motivator to keep individuals in line, the Ruling Class will inevitably take measures to ensure that their positions are well-maintained. It is for this reason that I doubt AI will be coming for white-collar workers as quickly as they would for blue; it's easy to lay off a bunch of factory workers, who uneducated as they are, would still have a pretty solid chance of voting for whomever put them out of that job (unless proper social safety measures are put in place, including comprehensive union protections and universal healthcare).

It is my prediction that as time and technology advances, we as a global society will see first a drastic increase in the number of tyrannical/despotic regimes emerge as rulers fight to keep their places on the top of the food-chain. At the same time however, this increase in fascism will consequently increase the awareness of anti-fascist causes; and as the main sources of despotic tyranny in the world today are fueled by capitalism, that awareness will turn into empathy for those stuck under it's reign.