#personal training computer software

[fitbudd01]

Why FitBudd's Personal Training Computer Software is a Game-Changer for Fitness Professionals

In the short-evolving global of fitness and technology, private trainers are seeking out smarter ways to manage clients, tune progress, and deliver pinnacle-tier provider. That’s in which FitBudd’s personal training pc software program steps in as a real sport-changer. Designed with the needs of modern-day non-public trainers in thoughts, FitBudd is revolutionizing how fitness professionals connect to their customers and streamline their businesses—all from the ease of a single platform.

The Rise of Personal Training Computer Software In an era where everything is digital, health experts can no longer depend solely on pen-and-paper strategies or scattered spreadsheets. Clients expect seamless verbal exchange, real-time updates, and personalized education experiences. The shift closer to non-public education pc software program isn't always only a fashion—it’s a necessity. Whether you’re an unbiased educate, run a boutique studio, or manage more than one running shoes, software program answers like FitBudd allow you to scale your commercial enterprise and serve clients extra successfully.

What Makes FitBudd Stand Out? FitBudd isn't always simply every other device in the crowded health tech space—it’s a complete surroundings constructed for personal trainers. From automation to analytics, the platform is engineered to empower fitness experts to consciousness on what topics most: helping clients attain their dreams.

Here’s what sets FitBudd’s non-public training computer software apart:

1. Custom Branded Fitness App One of FitBudd’s standout features is the potential to launch your personal custom-branded health app. Unlike popular structures, FitBudd permits you to customize the app together with your brand, emblem colours, and call—improving your expert presence and constructing believe together with your clients. This gives you a aggressive area in a saturated market.

2. Client Management Made Easy Managing multiple customers may be overwhelming. FitBudd simplifies client onboarding, progress tracking, and communique. With particular customer profiles, running shoes can easily get admission to exercise history, dietary options, and overall performance metrics, permitting a sincerely personalized coaching experience.

3. Automated Workouts & Nutrition Plans Time is cash for personal running shoes. FitBudd’s automation gear assist you create and agenda exercises and meal plans speedy, reducing repetitive tasks. Whether you’re education on-line or in man or woman, clients can receive real-time updates and reminders immediately thru the app.

4. Real-Time Messaging and Check-Ins FitBudd makes it clean to live linked along with your clients through real-time messaging, video test-ins, and development updates. This feature is crucial for keeping motivation high and making sure accountability—even between periods.

5. Progress Tracking and Analytics Results are the whole thing in health. FitBudd offers certain progress tracking with charts, graphs, and facts points that deliver each trainers and clients insight into their performance. You can music metrics which includes weight, reps, units, energy burned, and more—all in the software dashboard.

6. Seamless Payment Integration Say goodbye to chasing invoices. FitBudd’s personal education pc software includes integrated fee processing, permitting customers to enroll in plans or pay in step with consultation without delay via the app. This ensures you get paid on time and reduces administrative problem.

7. Marketing and Lead Generation Growing your personal education enterprise requires greater than simply training—it requires advertising. FitBudd enables trainers appeal to and convert new leads with tools for constructing touchdown pages, going for walks promotions, and collecting patron testimonials.

Why Personal Trainers Love FitBudd Thousands of fitness specialists have embraced FitBudd for one easy reason: it facilitates them grow their enterprise whilst providing better provider. Here are a few ways FitBudd provides cost to a instructor’s career:

Increased Efficiency: Automate scheduling, billing, and making plans to store hours each week.

Improved Client Retention: Engaging, consistent communication keeps customers influenced and dependable.

Professional Branding: Launch your personal health app to face out and build authority.

Scalability: Serve extra clients with out compromising pleasant, whether or not regionally or globally.

Real-Life Impact: FitBudd in Action Consider Sarah, an authorized private trainer with over 30 clients. Before the usage of FitBudd, she spent hours coping with spreadsheets, juggling texts, and chasing down payments. After switching to FitBudd’s personal schooling pc software, she turned into capable of automate her scheduling, create reusable exercising templates, and communicate with customers thru her own branded app. The result? She doubled her consumer base and stepped forward client satisfaction—with out burning out.

FitBudd: Designed for the Future of Fitness As the fitness enterprise turns into extra virtual, private running shoes ought to adapt to stay in advance. FitBudd is not simply preserving up with the trend—it’s setting the same old. Whether you're simply beginning out or coping with a thriving enterprise, this private training computer software can simplify operations, enhance purchaser engagement, and unencumber new boom opportunities.

Conclusion: Elevate Your Fitness Business with FitBudd

In a competitive enterprise, having the proper equipment is vital. FitBudd’s all-in-one platform is the remaining solution for personal trainers who want to paintings smarter, no longer tougher. With effective capabilities tailored specifically for fitness experts, FitBudd’s private education computer software makes it easier than ever to control customers, deliver results, and scale your commercial enterprise.

If you're prepared to take your health training to the next degree, it's time to experience what FitBudd can do for you. Book a free demo these days and see why it’s relied on with the aid of fitness specialists around the arena.

[bi-writes]

whats wrong with ai?? genuinely curious <3

okay let's break it down. i'm an engineer, so i'm going to come at you from a perspective that may be different than someone else's.

i don't hate ai in every aspect. in theory, there are a lot of instances where, in fact, ai can help us do things a lot better without. here's a few examples:

ai detecting cancer

ai sorting recycling

some practical housekeeping that gemini (google ai) can do

all of the above examples are ways in which ai works with humans to do things in parallel with us. it's not overstepping--it's sorting, using pixels at a micro-level to detect abnormalities that we as humans can not, fixing a list. these are all really small, helpful ways that ai can work with us.

everything else about ai works against us. in general, ai is a huge consumer of natural resources. every prompt that you put into character.ai, chatgpt? this wastes water + energy. it's not free. a machine somewhere in the world has to swallow your prompt, call on a model to feed data into it and process more data, and then has to generate an answer for you all in a relatively short amount of time.

that is crazy expensive. someone is paying for that, and if it isn't you with your own money, it's the strain on the power grid, the water that cools the computers, the A/C that cools the data centers. and you aren't the only person using ai. chatgpt alone gets millions of users every single day, with probably thousands of prompts per second, so multiply your personal consumption by millions, and you can start to see how the picture is becoming overwhelming.

that is energy consumption alone. we haven't even talked about how problematic ai is ethically. there is currently no regulation in the united states about how ai should be developed, deployed, or used.

what does this mean for you?

it means that anything you post online is subject to data mining by an ai model (because why would they need to ask if there's no laws to stop them? wtf does it matter what it means to you to some idiot software engineer in the back room of an office making 3x your salary?). oh, that little fic you posted to wattpad that got a lot of attention? well now it's being used to teach ai how to write. oh, that sketch you made using adobe that you want to sell? adobe didn't tell you that anything you save to the cloud is now subject to being used for their ai models, so now your art is being replicated to generate ai images in photoshop, without crediting you (they have since said they don't do this...but privacy policies were never made to be human-readable, and i can't imagine they are the only company to sneakily try this). oh, your apartment just installed a new system that will use facial recognition to let their residents inside? oh, they didn't train their model with anyone but white people, so now all the black people living in that apartment building can't get into their homes. oh, you want to apply for a new job? the ai model that scans resumes learned from historical data that more men work that role than women (so the model basically thinks men are better than women), so now your resume is getting thrown out because you're a woman.

ai learns from data. and data is flawed. data is human. and as humans, we are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, divided. so the ai models we train will learn from this. ai learns from people's creative works--their personal and artistic property. and now it's scrambling them all up to spit out generated images and written works that no one would ever want to read (because it's no longer a labor of love), and they're using that to make money. they're profiting off of people, and there's no one to stop them. they're also using generated images as marketing tools, to trick idiots on facebook, to make it so hard to be media literate that we have to question every single thing we see because now we don't know what's real and what's not.

the problem with ai is that it's doing more harm than good. and we as a society aren't doing our due diligence to understand the unintended consequences of it all. we aren't angry enough. we're too scared of stifling innovation that we're letting it regulate itself (aka letting companies decide), which has never been a good idea. we see it do one cool thing, and somehow that makes up for all the rest of the bullshit?

[jadeharleyinc]

the scale of AI's ecological footprint

standalone version of my response to the following:

"you need soulless art? [...] why should you get to use all that computing power and electricity to produce some shitty AI art? i don’t actually think you’re entitled to consume those resources." "i think we all deserve nice things. [...] AI art is not a nice thing. it doesn’t meaningfully contribute to us thriving and the cost in terms of energy use [...] is too fucking much. none of us can afford to foot the bill." "go watch some tv show or consume some art that already exists. […] you know what’s more environmentally and economically sustainable […]? museums. galleries. being in nature."

you can run free and open source AI art programs on your personal computer, with no internet connection. this doesn't require much more electricity than running a resource-intensive video game on that same computer. i think it's important to consume less. but if you make these arguments about AI, do you apply them to video games too? do you tell Fortnite players to play board games and go to museums instead?

speaking of museums: if you drive 3 miles total to a museum and back home, you have consumed more energy and created more pollution than generating AI images for 24 hours straight (this comes out to roughly 1400 AI images). "being in nature" also involves at least this much driving, usually. i don't think these are more environmentally-conscious alternatives.

obviously, an AI image model costs energy to train in the first place, but take Stable Diffusion v2 as an example: it took 40,000 to 60,000 kWh to train. let's go with the upper bound. if you assume ~125g of CO2 per kWh, that's ~7.5 tons of CO2. to put this into perspective, a single person driving a single car for 12 months emits 4.6 tons of CO2. meanwhile, for example, the creation of a high-budget movie emits 2840 tons of CO2.

is the carbon cost of a single car being driven for 20 months, or 1/378th of a Marvel movie, worth letting anyone with a mid-end computer, anywhere, run free offline software that consumes a gaming session's worth of electricity to produce hundreds of images? i would say yes. in a heartbeat.

even if you see creating AI images as "less soulful" than consuming Marvel/Fortnite content, it's undeniably "more useful" to humanity as a tool. not to mention this usefulness includes reducing the footprint of creating media. AI is more environment-friendly than human labor on digital creative tasks, since it can get a task done with much less computer usage, doesn't commute to work, and doesn't eat.

and speaking of eating, another comparison: if you made an AI image program generate images non-stop for every second of every day for an entire year, you could offset your carbon footprint by… eating 30% less beef and lamb. not pork. not even meat in general. just beef and lamb.

the tech industry is guilty of plenty of horrendous stuff. but when it comes to the individual impact of AI, saying "i don’t actually think you’re entitled to consume those resources. do you need this? is this making you thrive?" to an individual running an AI program for 45 minutes a day per month is equivalent to questioning whether that person is entitled to a single 3 mile car drive once per month or a single meatball's worth of beef once per month. because all of these have the same CO2 footprint.

so yeah. i agree, i think we should drive less, eat less beef, stream less video, consume less. but i don't think we should tell people "stop using AI programs, just watch a TV show, go to a museum, go hiking, etc", for the same reason i wouldn't tell someone "stop playing video games and play board games instead". i don't think this is a productive angle.

(sources and number-crunching under the cut.)

good general resource: GiovanH's article "Is AI eating all the energy?", which highlights the negligible costs of running an AI program, the moderate costs of creating an AI model, and the actual indefensible energy waste coming from specific companies deploying AI irresponsibly.

CO2 emissions from running AI art programs: a) one AI image takes 3 Wh of electricity. b) one AI image takes 1mn in, for example, Midjourney. c) so if you create 1 AI image per minute for 24 hours straight, or for 45 minutes per day for a month, you've consumed 4.3 kWh. d) using the UK electric grid through 2024 as an example, the production of 1 kWh releases 124g of CO2. therefore the production of 4.3 kWh releases 533g (~0.5 kg) of CO2.

CO2 emissions from driving your car: cars in the EU emit 106.4g of CO2 per km. that's 171.19g for 1 mile, or 513g (~0.5 kg) for 3 miles.

costs of training the Stable Diffusion v2 model: quoting GiovanH's article linked in 1. "Generative models go through the same process of training. The Stable Diffusion v2 model was trained on A100 PCIe 40 GB cards running for a combined 200,000 hours, which is a specialized AI GPU that can pull a maximum of 300 W. 300 W for 200,000 hours gives a total energy consumption of 60,000 kWh. This is a high bound that assumes full usage of every chip for the entire period; SD2’s own carbon emission report indicates it likely used significantly less power than this, and other research has shown it can be done for less." at 124g of CO2 per kWh, this comes out to 7440 kg.

CO2 emissions from red meat: a) carbon footprint of eating plenty of red meat, some red meat, only white meat, no meat, and no animal products the difference between a beef/lamb diet and a no-beef-or-lamb diet comes down to 600 kg of CO2 per year. b) Americans consume 42g of beef per day. this doesn't really account for lamb (egads! my math is ruined!) but that's about 1.2 kg per month or 15 kg per year. that single piece of 42g has a 1.65kg CO2 footprint. so our 3 mile drive/4.3 kWh of AI usage have the same carbon footprint as a 12g piece of beef. roughly the size of a meatball [citation needed].

[thegalleonsnest]

OK since I haven't seen too many people talk about this since twitter news usually strikes pretty fast over here whenever e'usk does anything ever, let me give ya'll the run down on two things that will go live on NOVEMBER 15TH and why people are mass migrating to Blue Sky once more; and provide resources to help protect your art and make the transition to Blue Sky easier if you so choose:

The Block function no longer blocks people as intended. It now basically acts as a glorified Mute button. Even when you block someone, they can still see your posts, but they can't engage in them. If your account is a Public one and not a Private one, people you blocked will see your posts.

They say because people can easily "share and hide harmful or private information about those they've blocked," they changed it this way for "greater transparency." When in reality, this is an extremely dangerous change, as the whole point of blocking is to cease interaction with people entirely for a plethora of reasons, i.e. stalking, harassment, spam, endangerment, or just plainly annoying and not wanting to see said tweets/accounts. or you know, for 18+ accounts who do not want minors interacting with them or their material at all (There is speculation saying these changes are specifically for Elon himself so he can do his own kind of stalking, and honestly, with the private likes change, it lowkey checks out in my opinion)

Also, this straight up goes against and may violate Apple and Google's app store policies and also is straight up illegal in Canada and probably other countries as well.

If this ACTUALLY goes through, twitter will only be available in select countries, probably exclusively in the US, which would collapse the site with the lost of users and stock, and probably be the last push it needs to kill the site. And if not, will be a very sad and exclusive platform made for specific kinds of people who line up with musk's line of thinking.

2. New policies regarding Grok AI and basically removing the option to opt out of Grok's information gathering to improve their software.

And anything you upload/post on the site is considered "fair game" with "royalty-free licenses" and they can do whatever they please with it. Primarily using any and all posts on twitter to train their Grok AI. A few months ago, there was a setting you can opt out of so they couldn't take anything you post to "improve" Grok, but I guess because so many people were opting out, they decided to make it mandatory as part of the policy change (This is mainly speculation from what I hear).

So this is considered the final straw for a LOT of people, especially artists who have been gripping on to twitter for as long as they can, but the AI nonsense is too much for people now, including myself. Lot's of people are moving to Blue Sky for good reason, and from personal experience, it is literally 10x better than twitter ever was, even before elon took over. There is no algorithm on there, and you can save "feeds" to your timeline to have a catered timelines to hop between if your looking for something specific like furry art or game dev stuff. It's taken them a bit to get off the ground and add much needed features, but it's genuinely so much better now

RESOURCES

Project Glaze & Cara

If you're an artist who's still on twitter or trying to ride it out for as long as you can for whatever reason you have, do yourself a favor and Glaze and/or Nightshade your work. Project Glaze is a free program designed to protect your art work from getting scrapped by AI machines. Glazing basically makes it harder to adapt and copy artwork that AI programs try to scan, while Nightshade basically "poisons" works to make AI libraries much more unstable and generate images completely off the mark. (These are layman's terms I'm using here, but follow the link to get more information)

The only problem with these programs is that they can be resource intensive for computers, and not every pc can run glaze. It's basically like rendering a frame/animation, you gotta let your pc sit there to get it glazed/nightshade, and depending on the intensity and power of your pc, this may take minutes to hours depending on how much you wanna protect your work.

HOWEVER, there are two alternatives, WebGlaze and Cara

WebGlaze is an in browser version of the program, so your pc doesn't have to do the heavy lifting. You do need to have an account with Glaze and be invited to use the program (I have not done so personally so I don't know much about the process.)

Cara is an artist focused site that doubles as both a portfolio site and a general social media platform. They've partnered with Glaze and have their own browser glazing called "Cara Glaze," and highly encourage users to post their work Glazed and are extremely anti-ai. You do get limited uses per day to glaze your work, so if you plan on doing a huge backlog uploading of your art, it may take awhile if your using just Cara Glaze.

Some twitter users have suggested glazing your art, cropping it, and overlaying it with a frame telling people to follow them elsewhere like on Bluesky. Here's a template someone provided if you wanna use this one or make your own.

Blue Sky Resources and Tips

So if your a twitter user and your about to realize the hellish task of refollowing a massive chunk of people you follow, have no fear, there's an extension called Sky Follower Bridge (Firefox & Chrome links). This is a very basic extension that makes it really easy to find people on Bluesky

It sorts them out by trying to find matching usernames, usernames in descriptions, or by screen name. It's not 100% perfect, there's a couple people I already follow on Blue Sky but the extension could not find them on twitter correctly, but I still found a huge chunk of people. Also if your worried that this extension is "iffy," they do have a github open with the source publicly available and the Blue Sky Team themselves have promoted the extension in their recent posts while welcoming new users to the platform.

FEEDS and LABELS

OK SO THE COOLEST PART ABOUT BLUESKY IS THE FEEDS SYSTEM. Basically if you've made a twitter list before, it's like that, but way more customizable and caters to specific types of posts/topics. Consolidating them into a timeline/feed that exclusively filled about those particular topics, or just people in general. There's thousands to pick and choose from!

Here's a couple of mine that I have saved and ready (down below). Some feeds I have saved so I can jump to seeing what my friends and mutuals are up to, and see their posts specifically so it doesn't get lost in reposts or other accounts, and also specialized feeds for browsing artists within the furry community.

The Furry Community feeds I have here were created by people who've built an algorithm to place any #furry or #furryart or other special tags like #Furrystreamer or #furrydev. They even have one for commissions, and yes you can say commissions on a post and not have it destroyed or shadow banned. You are safe.

If you want, and I highly recommend it to get visibility and check out a neat community, follow furryli.st to get added to their list and feeds. Once your on the list, even without a hashtag, you'll still pop up in their specialized feeds as just a member of the community there. There are plenty of other feeds out there besides this one, but I feel like a lot of people could use one like this. They even got ones for OC specific too I remember seeing somewhere.

And in terms of labels, they can be either ways to help label yourself with specific things or have user created accessibility settings to help better control your experience on Blue Sky.

And my personal favorite: Ai Imagery Labeler. Removes any AI stuff or hides it to the best of it's abilities, and it does a pretty good job, I have not seen anything AI related since subscribing to it.

Finally, HASHTAGS WORK & No need to censor yourself!

This is NOT like twitter or any other big named social media site AT ALL, so you don't have to work around words to get your stuff out there and be seen. There are literally feeds built around having commissions getting and art seen! Some people worry about bots and that has been a recent issue since a lot of people are migrating to Blue Sky, but it comes with any social media territory.

ALSO COOL PART,

you can search a hashtag on someone's profile and search exclusively on that profile as well! You can even put the hashtag in bio for easy access if you have a specialize tag like here on tumblr. OR EVEN BUILD YOUR OWN ART FEED FOR YOUR STUFF SPECIFICALLY!

So yeah, there's your quick run down about twitter's current burning building, how to protect your art, and what to do when you move to Blue Sky! Have fun!

[draconym]

nightshade is basically useless https://www.tumblr.com/billclintonsbeefarm/740236576484999168/even-if-you-dont-like-generative-models-this

I'm not a developer, but the creators of Nightshade do address some of this post's concerns in their FAQ. Obviously it's not a magic bullet to prevent AI image scraping, and obviously there's an arms race between AI developers and artists attempting to disrupt their data pools. But personally, I think it's an interesting project and is accessible to most people to try. Giving up on it at this stage seems really premature.

But if it's caption data that's truly valuable, Tumblr is an ... interesting ... place to be scraping it from. For one thing, users tend to get pretty creative with both image descriptions and tags. For another, I hope whichever bot scrapes my blog enjoys the many bird photos I have described as "Cheese." Genuinely curious if Tumblr data is actually valuable or if it's garbage.

That said, I find it pretty ironic that the OP of the post you linked seems to think nightshade and glaze specifically are an unreasonable waste of electricity. Both are software. Your personal computer's graphics card is doing the work, not an entire data center, so if your computer was going to be on anyway, the cost is a drop in the bucket compared to what AI generators are consuming.

Training a large language model like GPT-3, for example, is estimated to use just under 1,300 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity; about as much power as consumed annually by 130 US homes. To put that in context, streaming an hour of Netflix requires around 0.8 kWh (0.0008 MWh) of electricity. That means you’d have to watch 1,625,000 hours to consume the same amount of power it takes to train GPT-3. (source)

So, no, I don't think Nightshade or Glaze are useless just because they aren't going to immediately topple every AI image generator. There's not really much downside for the artists interested in using them so I hope they continue development.

[missidk1121]

Prologue: Late Nights and Blooming Dreams

Pairing: Dino x Fem!Reader

Story tags: Barista!Chan, Software Engineer!Reader, Best Friends to Lovers, fluff, humor, one-sided pining(?) to mutual pining, very light on angst, OT13, other members as helpful (and unhelpful) side characters

Content Warnings: None

Word Count: 1.8K

Author's Note: My first fic on here, and my first Seventeen fanfic ever 😶 Please be kind, but also feedback is welcome and appreciated! Also, this is the prologue to a multi-chapter fic that I have currently in the works, so I hope you'll look forward to it 😊

🎧 Music playing at The Cozy Bloom

Series masterlist | Read on AO3 | Next

7 years ago

Every day was bleeding into the next. Wake up, go to class, study, eat somewhere in between, sleep, rinse and repeat. It was getting tiring. But it was finals week. You couldn’t stop now, and so you packed your belongings, heading back to your current favorite café, holding on tightly to your dreams even as they were slipping away alongside your sanity.

“Hi again, what can I get for you?”

In the months since this place opened up you’ve seen four people, including the manager, working here every day, and to be honest this guy was your favorite.

You couldn’t fully explain why. He just had a charming air about him. From his casual smile which naturally drew the attention of any customer he spoke with, to the moments when you could hear him laugh, a full and bright sound that seemed unique to him. He just had this presence that stood out in a pleasant way. Plus he was cute.

“I’d like a pourover, please,” you said.

It occurred to you that you didn’t even know his name. You took a quick glance at his name tag.

“Okay, I’ll have that out for you here in a few minutes,” said Chan.

And so you returned to your corner, sitting by the front window, the light above your table for two waning, calling you to come quietly observe the restless city hustling even past sundown. However, before you even had the chance to fade along with it, the code editor on your laptop had loaded, and it was time for you to get hustling as well.

This place had become a bit of a cult favorite, especially among students. Chan always saw a select few on a near daily basis, some of which he knew well enough, or had gotten to know well enough, to know that they went to the same school that he did, what they were studying, and at least a little of their personalities.

There was Jun, a foreign exchange student in musical theatre whom he met at a dance class. An actor and dancer well-liked by everyone at school for his talent, kindness, and effortless sense of humor.

Vernon and Seungkwan, his friends and roommates, one of whom studied computer science while the other majored in communications. Lately Chan had been trying to get them to apply for the job openings here, promising he’d train them and get them hooked on the vast world of making coffee in no time.

There was also Jihoon, a music production student. He once gave Chan a very detailed critique of his pour over technique that forever changed the way Chan viewed coffee. That’s as far as their interactions went, though.

And then there was you. He didn’t even know your name. He had only ever caught glimpses of you on campus. He always saw you coding while you were here, so he asked Vernon about you one time, but all he said was “Why? You interested?” Apparently he had never really spoken to you either, despite being in some classes together.

You came in and did the same things as always: ordered your usual, sat at that table in the corner, and started coding. And until recently, you always came in during the morning three days a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The last few days, however, you’ve been coming in every evening.

It was much less busy this time of day, of course. Maybe Chan would talk to you today.

On second thought: no, he shouldn’t bother you. It’s finals week, so you must’ve been really busy to come in this late.

And so he simply made your coffee and brought it to you, exchanging nothing but polite pleasantries as per usual.

The next hour passed by slowly. There were hardly any customers. One or two enjoyed a late evening drink and meal, while others needed a boost to push through their neverending workload. It was closing time, and almost everyone, the quiet diners and the caffeine-boosted workaholics alike, called it quits for the night.

“I finished all the dishes. Well, most of them,” said Mingyu, then he nodded in your direction. “I’ve gotta hurry home. My baby’s been sick. Can you take care of the rest?”

Chan looked at you. At some point, you had laid your head down on the table and dozed off, your coffee half-finished and your laptop asleep alongside you.

“Go take care of your dog. I’ll make sure to wake her and close up shop,” he said.

“You’re the best!” said Mingyu before hurrying out.

The café was quiet. Just the two of you. He felt kinda bad about waking you, but he needed to finish cleaning and lock up the shop. And so he approached you, hoping you would just wake up on your own, but you didn’t.

“Excuse me,” he said softly, and just as he was about to tap your shoulder your phone buzzed.

Hey. Did you finish writing the requirements doc? Sorry I couldn’t get my share done. Exams have been a real bitch these last few days. Appreciate it

Buzz. Then another one.

Have you fixed that bug yet? I couldn’t figure out what I did to cause it :/ If anyone can fix it it’s u!! ♡ Lmk what you find!

Chan rolled his eyes.

He felt bad about seeing your texts, but good grief. Why are these people bothering you about their problems? And can’t they see it’s half past 10:00?

Surprisingly, you didn’t wake up. You didn’t even move a muscle.

Chan let out a quiet sigh. Now he really felt bad about waking you.

He then left you for a minute, grabbing his jacket, and when he returned by your side he bent down and gently draped it over you, feeling a brief jolt in his fingers as they accidentally grazed over your soft hair. After adjusting it to make sure it covered you well enough, you began to move slightly, causing him to startle a bit, but it was just a subtle stir as you inhaled and exhaled deeply, burrowing yourself a little more under his jacket, your nose ghosting over the collar while a contented smile peeked out from underneath.

His heart sped up, and he quietly raced to do anything other than watch you sleep.

A warm, earthy aroma entwined with the invigorating smell of hot coffee filled the air. You struggled to get your eyes open for what felt like minutes before finally you noticed the bright red and blue pens stacked on top of a notebook open to a page full of chicken scratches, your reflection in the black screen of your laptop staring back at you as you realized that you had fallen asleep at the café. As if that wasn’t enough to startle you awake, that musky scent you were relishing in was coming from some jacket draped over your back. Whose jacket was this?

CRASH!

“AH!”

“Woah!”

The sound of glass shattering right behind you made you jump from your seat, the nice-smelling jacket dropping from your shoulders to be forgotten on the floor.

You turned around, finding that barista from earlier — Chan, you remember — startled as he glanced between you and the fragments of glass scattered across the floor, just a bit of coffee trickling toward both your feet.

The room dropped to silence as you both simply stared at each other and the broken glass in shock.

He was the first to speak, clearing his throat before saying, “You’re awake.”

“Obviously,” you retorted, immediately regretting it as soon as you heard yourself.

Here was this sweet barista who had kindly lent you his jacket in your sleep and you just had to be a smart ass.

Instead of looking at you funny or being startled by your rudeness, Chan merely laughed. And laughed in the way you had only heard from afar in your little nook, except now it was crystal-clear, a mere table away from you, tickling your ears with its brilliance.

“I was drinking some coffee while I was waiting for you to wake up, but I kinda dozed off and knocked it over. I am so sorry that I woke you up.” He bowed politely, but then his cheeks flushed as he quietly added, “Er, maybe you would’ve preferred I woke you up at closing time so that you didn’t have to, y’know, sleep at a table with some stranger’s jacket covering you. I’m sorry.”

His words always seemed to come out so confidently, so seeing him become shy all of a sudden got a soft chuckle out of you.

“It’s fine,” you said. “I’m the one who should apologize for falling asleep when you should be home by now.”

“To be honest, you seemed like you really needed the rest,” he admitted sheepishly. Then his bashfulness faded as he held out his hand.

“I’m Chan.”

“I already read your name ta–” you stopped yourself. “I’m Y/N,” you corrected yourself, shaking his hand.

God, you were such a recluse. When was the last time you physically spoke to a human being?

Chan laughed, and suddenly you felt like less of an asshole again.

“Well, Y/N. I’m glad to have finally met you properly,” he said. Then he walked around the mess he made and behind the front counter, heading toward what seemed to be a supply closet, smiling at you as he said, “I’ve gotta clean that mess and close up. We’ll have to talk some more next time. You’re pretty funny.”

Your brain lit up at the possibility of there being a “next time.” You found him to be rather interesting himself. However, instead of admitting that you meekly nodded and let out a little “Yeah.”

He reached for the doorknob of the closet, but before doing so stopped and turned to you, just as you were about to check your phone for any messages you might’ve missed, his expression soft with worry.

“By the way,” he said, “I hope this doesn’t sound weird or anything, but… I hope you take care of yourself.”

You tilted your head curiously.

“I just mean,” he paused. “Try not to pass out again, okay? You’re always working really hard, so… just ask for help sometimes, you know? I don’t really know much about coding — though I have a friend who does — but anyway…”

“I’ll be careful,” you said, touched by his concern. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” he replied, smiling gently.

You said your goodbyes, packed your things, and left, even putting your phone in your backpack too. There was no need to think about coding, or the piling messages from your group project members to wile away the hours of your insomnia. Your mind was going to be dreaming about tonight’s events until sunrise, when you had to get up and do it all over again, except now you had something to look forward to in the evening.

[xuchiya]

Young Gen Love || jeong yunho || 800 follower special

| genre: fluff. slice of life. slow-burn-ish | mentions: nothing much. just a little anxiety but it is more of yunho being a gentleman.

thank you all so much, my loves! My journey here in this platform has been amazing, met a lot and lots of my loves! 🤍🥹

January 16, 2025

It was my first day on my night classes that my mom told me to apply to since it coordinates with my chosen course in college. I walk in the computer classroom, greeting everyone and the professor, I sat at the back and settle my bag down. Night classes always had a different kind of energy—dimly lit hallways, the hum of fluorescent lights, and the quiet murmur of students trying to absorb the lessons after an already long day.

I scanned my surroundings. Most of my classmates were older—some around my parents’ age, others even older. They were here to learn the basics of computers, eager but sometimes struggling with the difference between software and hardware. I admired their determination, but at the same time, a small disappointment settled in my chest.

There was no one my age. And it would be fun having someone close or older or younger than me would be my classmate, I spun on my chair, turning on my designated computer.

Just as I resigned myself to being the odd one out, the door creaked open. A tall figure walked in, gripping the strap of his backpack. Brunette hair slightly tousled, sharp eyes taking in the room, a quiet but undeniable presence. Our professor gestured for him to introduce himself.

"I'm Jeong Yunho, I'm 24 and ..." he said, voice steady, but there was a hint of nervousness underneath. "I’m here to learn more about computers. I only have basic knowledge, so... please take care of me." He bows his head before moving towards his seat which was just on my right side.

My lips quirked up.

He was a few months younger than me—just a small gap—but enough to make me feel relieved. I wasn’t alone anymore.

For two weeks, we didn’t speak. We barely even acknowledged each other kudos to my stuttering and introverted personality, but slowly, the class dynamics shifted. People became more comfortable, more familiar. I started moving around, observing other groups engagin conversatoins with them and having few shared laughters, taking notes on how they configured the computers, absorbing techniques like a sponge.

One night, I found myself hovering near his table. He was struggling on one of the tasks. Yunho was focused, brows furrowed as he listened to our professor’s explanation, his hands hovering uncertainly over the keyboard. He was clearly still learning, still figuring things out, but he was determined.

He always came to face the same error for the past 5 minutes until he sighs, "I have to redo this again ..." I chuckle, pulling a chair beside him, "You just miss one step that's why you were facing this error ... let me help."

He glances at me before nodding. He followed my instructions, even explaining to him why it needs to apply or how it functions when applied. He nods as we finish the task, he sighs in relief, turning to me.

"You're good." Yunho compliments. I chuckle, waving off his compliment but that didn't stop my cheeks from burning.

"No I'm not. I barely started my task." He looks at my open computer then back to me. A playful look on his eyebrows, "Or you're just lying to me right now and finished hours ago."

I chuckle shaking my head, "Believe me, I haven't even open File explorer."

Somehow, without realizing it, we started spending more time together—small moments, like exchanging notes, grabbing snacks during breaks, or sharing casual stories. Weeks passed, turning into months, and something about him pulled me in.

And that's where I started to notice things.

February 13, 2025

The night air was crisp, the streetlights casting a soft yellow glow along the sidewalk. The usual post-class chatter had faded as our classmates rushed off to catch their trains, leaving just the two of us walking down the main road toward my bus stop.

The city was still alive—cars rolling past with their headlights cutting through the night, distant honks echoing, and the occasional murmur of people walking ahead. I pulled my jacket tighter around me, my bag slung over one shoulder, as Yunho walked in step beside me, his hands casually tucked into his pockets.

I didn't think much of it at first, but as we walked, I noticed the way he moved—subtle, instinctive. When I unconsciously veered too close to the curb, he shifted, placing himself between me and the street without a word. I glanced up at him, but his face remained neutral, as if he hadn’t even realized he was doing it.

Curious, I tested it. I deliberately took a step closer to the road, pretending to adjust my bag strap.

Without missing a beat, he adjusted too, his shoulder brushing mine as he once again positioned himself between me and the passing cars.

I bit back a smile. But then I tried to walk in front of him, doing a little skip as I near to the road to see if he’d follow.

And he did.

A hand was suddenly were on my shoulder and pushes me gently back on the sidewalk and position himself beside me. A warmth spread through my chest. It wasn’t exaggerated. It wasn’t done for attention. He simply moved with me, like an unspoken promise to keep me safe.

"You know the rule" I finally murmured, breaking the comfortable silence. He turned his head slightly, looking down at me with mild confusion. "What rule?"

"The sidewalk rule." I lifted a brow, tilting my head toward him. For a moment, he didn’t respond, just kept walking. Then, he let out a small chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck, his ears turning red. "It’s just a habit, I guess."

"A habit?"

"Yeah." His voice was softer now. "I was raised to always walk on the side closest to the street when I’m with someone I—" He paused, clearing his throat, looking away. "—when I’m with someone important."

My breath hitched.

I turned my head away, hoping the cool air would calm the sudden rush of warmth creeping up my neck. My heart pounded so loudly I was certain he could hear it.

We walked in silence for a few more steps until the bus stop came into view. Yunho slowed his pace beside me, as if reluctant to reach it too soon.

And I realized, at that moment, I didn’t want the walk to end either.

February 21, 2025

It was late, the night air cool as our group made their way down the sidewalk towards the train station. Streetlights flickered overhead, their warm glow casting long shadows along the pavement. Conversations were scattered—some laughing, some yawning, everyone eager to get home after another long class.

As we approached my usual bus stop, the others barely slowed, waving quick goodbyes as they hurried off to catch their trains. I watched them disappear down the road, my breath fogging slightly in the chilly air.

All except one.

"You guys go ahead," Yunho’s voice came from beside me. His hands were stuffed into his jacket pockets, his posture relaxed, yet there was an undeniable certainty in his tone. "I'll wait for her til' the bus comes."

I froze.

My heart stuttered so hard I thought for sure he'd hear it. I turned slightly, expecting some kind of teasing grin, but there was none. Just him, standing there as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

The others didn’t question it. They just nodded and waved, disappearing into the night. And suddenly, it was just the two of us.

The bus stop felt quieter than usual, the occasional car humming past as we stood beneath the soft glow of the streetlight. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, trying to ignore the way my pulse quickened. "You really didn’t have to wait, you know," I murmured, glancing up at him.

He shrugged. "It’s fine." Then, a small smirk tugged at his lips. "Can’t have you standing out here all alone, can I?"

I swallowed, warmth creeping up my neck.

For the next few minutes, we talked—about class, about the ridiculous things our professor said that night, about how our classmates were still struggling with the configurations. His voice was smooth, casual, as if this was just another normal moment. But for me?

I was barely keeping it together.

The way he stood close enough that our arms almost brushed. The way his laughter rumbled softly in the quiet night. The way he looked down at me whenever I spoke, his eyes warm and focused, like nothing else existed in that moment but me.

Then, headlights appeared in the distance. My bus.

I felt a strange disappointment settle in my chest. As the bus slowed to a stop, I turned to him, unsure of what to say. "Thanks for waiting with me," I said, my voice softer than intended.

Yunho just smiled, tilting his head slightly. "Of course."

I took a step toward the open doors, but before I could climb in, I felt a gentle tug on my wrist.

I turned, wide-eyed. Yunho’s fingers curled lightly around mine, his grip warm even in the cold air, "Get home safe ... I-" he said, his voice quieter now, more intentional yet cutting himself off which made me curious.

And then, just like that, he let go, stepping back with an easy smile, as if he hadn’t just tilted my entire world.

I somehow managed to get on the bus, my legs feeling suspiciously weak. As the doors closed and the vehicle pulled away, I turned toward the window, watching as he stood there, hands back in his pockets, watching me leave.

He didn’t move until I was completely out of sight.

I barely survived that night without combusting.

February 26, 2025

I was late.

Again.

The clock glared at me with red, unrelenting numbers as I rushed out of my internship office, my heart pounding with a mix of exhaustion and urgency. The overtime had stretched longer than expected, eating into my class hours, and by the time I finally made it to the campus, an entire hour had slipped through my fingers.

I hated this. Hated the way I stumbled into the classroom, breathless, trying to make myself as invisible as possible while my professor continued the discussion without sparing me a glance. But I knew he noticed. His sharp, fleeting glance from the corner of his eye said enough.

I barely managed to slide into a chair before the weight of my lateness pressed into my chest like a cinderblock. The screen in front of me was filled with configuration steps and code I had no context for. My classmates were already deep into the task, their fingers flying over keyboards with an ease that only familiarity could bring.

I was lost.

The frustration built in my throat, burning hot and bitter. My fingers hovered uselessly over my touchpad as my eyes flickered between the screen and my classmates' progress. I tried to piece together what I had missed, but the more I stared, the more my thoughts tangled into a suffocating mess.

Then, a voice.

Low, familiar—steady.

"You okay?"

I blinked, snapping out of my panic just enough to register the presence beside me.

Yunho.

When had he moved closer? He had been at one of our classmate's table earlier helping on the task, but now he was right beside me, his presence a quiet force against my frazzled nerves. His scent—rich, chocolate-sweet cologne—wrapped around me, grounding and distracting all at once.

I turned my head slightly, and that’s when I realized just how close he was.

Too close.

He wasn’t even pretending to keep a respectable distance. His shoulder nearly brushed mine, his face mere inches away. The dim glow of the computer monitor cast soft shadows across his features, making the sharp angles of his jawline look impossibly gentle.

I nodded, moving to one of our friend's computer as he navigates the task, I watch the task unfolding, hoping I could catch up but with Yunho's presence really close to me was a challenge I don't think I'll success.

A small smile tugged at his lips, almost amused. "Focus," he murmured, voice dipping lower. "I need you to teach me."

Teach him?

The irony almost made me laugh. I was the one barely keeping my head above water, the one scrambling to understand what I had missed, and yet here he was—acting like I had everything under control.

But there was something in his tone. Something reassuring, something that pulled me away from my spiraling frustration and anchored me to the moment.

To him.

I swallowed, forcing myself to nod. "Right. Okay."

I tried to focus, I really did.

But every time he leaned in to ask our friend what he did, every time his voice brushed against my ear, my brain short-circuited. The deep timbre of his words sent shivers down my spine, making it nearly impossible to concentrate.

At one point, I had been leaning forward too long, my back protesting from the awkward position. I shifted, stretching slightly as I took a small step back—only for my heel to catch against something solid.

A box.

A stupid box filled with unused wires.

I barely had time to gasp before I lost my balance, the world tilting as I braced for impact. But I never hit the ground.

Warm hands caught me. One gripping my waist, firm and steady. The other securing my forearm, his fingers wrapping around my wrist like a lifeline.

My breath hitched.

For a moment, neither of us moved. The air between us was thick, electric, charged with something unspoken. My heart pounded wildly against my ribs as I slowly lifted my gaze, and that’s when I realized—he was staring at me.

Really staring.

His expression had shifted from his usual playful ease to something deeper, something unreadable. His dark eyes searched mine, his grip on me unwavering.

"You okay?" His voice had softened, laced with concern.

I could barely breathe. My entire body was frozen, caught in the intensity of his gaze, in the warmth of his hands still steadying me.

I nodded—too quickly. "Y-Yeah. I just—I should—" I cleared my throat, forcing my voice to sound normal. "I should get back to my seat."

His hands lingered for half a second longer before he finally let go, and I nearly stumbled again—not because of the wires this time, but because my knees felt ridiculously weak.

I didn’t dare look at him as I hurried back to my seat, my heart still hammering, my skin burning where his hands had been.

But minutes later, a chair scraped against the floor, and before I knew it, he was sitting behind me. I inhaled sharply, trying to calm my racing pulse, "Go to the partition first," Yunho instructed, his voice steady, as if nothing had just happened. "You need a drive to place your folder."

I nodded, gripping the mouse, determined to focus. But my fingers didn’t move the pointer to the right place.

He noticed, "There," he pointed, his patience unwavering.

I tried again. Fumbled. And then—his hand covered mine. Large. Warm. Steady. Guiding the mouse effortlessly, his fingers brushed against mine, sending a sharp jolt of electricity up my spine.

My breath hitched. My whole body stiffened. The world outside this moment ceased to exist. The quiet murmurs of our classmates, the soft hum of the computers, the faint tapping of keyboards—it all faded into nothingness.

All I could focus on was him.

His warmth against my skin.

The way his fingers curled slightly over mine, his grip neither forceful nor hesitant, just there—as if this wasn’t something he had to think about, as if guiding my hand was the most natural thing in the world.

Seconds stretched endlessly. I forgot how to breathe, forgot how to think, forgot how to function.

He didn’t move.

Neither did I.

The space between us shrank, charged with something unspoken, something that made the air feel heavier. I could feel his breath ghosting near my temple, slow and steady, in complete contrast to the erratic drumming of my own heartbeat.

I swallowed hard, my throat dry.

I should pull away. I should.

But I didn’t. Because for all the chaos in my head, for all the ways my body betrayed me with its nervous tremors, there was one undeniable truth—

I liked this.

I like him.

March 14, 2025

Guilt settled heavily on my chest as I walked toward campus, my steps slower than usual.

I had clocked out overtime again, staying later than planned at my internship. It was becoming a habit, one that weighed on me more than I cared to admit. The familiar exhaustion clung to my body, but it was nothing compared to the quiet guilt pressing down on me.

By the time I arrived at my night class, the discussion had already been going on for an hour. I barely took a breath before sliding the door open.

The creak of the door was louder than I intended, loud enough to make heads turn. The room fell into momentary silence, the professor pausing mid-sentence.

I bowed my head slightly. "Sorry I’m late."

Keeping my voice steady, I gently closed the door behind me. My friends greeted me with small smiles as I passed, but I barely acknowledged them. My mind was still occupied—by my professor’s earlier warning, by the weight of my internship hours, by the nagging feeling that I was always two steps behind.

I settled into my seat, adjusting my chair as I exhaled quietly. It was only then that I felt it. I didn’t have to look to know whose they were.

Even as I focused on my computer, booting it up, I could feel his gaze lingering on me—not intrusive, just there. A quiet presence, unwavering, as if he had been waiting.

The soft glow of my friend’s screen pulled my attention. They were exchanging files, peer-to-peer, laughing as they successfully transferred them. The energy in the room felt light, carefree—so different from the tightness in my chest.

I sighed, rubbing at my temple before shifting my gaze to the board. The task was written clearly, the instructions laid out in neat bullet points. I had to catch up. Again.

"You'll catch up quickly." His voice cut through my thoughts just as a familiar scent—warm, chocolate-sweet cologne—wrapped around me.

My body instantly relaxed.

I leaned back slightly, eyes flickering to my side, where Yunho sat comfortably beside me. He wasn’t even looking at his own screen—just watching me with a quiet sort of amusement.

I scoffed lightly, turning back to my task. "Barely…"

He noticed something in my tone, something unspoken. His breath came out in a quiet sigh. "You don’t have to worry about being late when you can catch up this fast."

I turned to him, frowning slightly. "If only I wasn’t being called out…"

Before he could respond, one of our classmates announced that we could take a break. I grabbed my snacks and drink, slipping out of the room before the air inside became too suffocating.

The campus at night was quiet, peaceful.

Most of the buildings were dark, the hallways emptied out as students took their breaks in small groups. I walked up a few steps, my feet leading me instinctively to the open soccer field. It wasn’t particularly grand—just an expanse of grass surrounded by empty bleachers—but the sky above it made all the difference.

Stars.

They scattered across the vast darkness, twinkling softly, stretching endlessly beyond my reach. The sight alone eased some of the tightness in my chest, the weight of the day slowly lifting.

I sat on the benches, nibbling on a cookie from my container, my gaze locked onto the sky. The quiet, the solitude—it was exactly what I needed.

Until I felt presence sat beside me, his usual cologne had been my cravings ever since and I didn’t need to look to know who it was. He didn’t say anything at first, simply making himself comfortable next to me.

"Stars make you calm."

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. A fact. A truth only he seemed to know.

I glanced at him, but he was already looking at the sky, his features relaxed in the dim glow of the field lights. Something about the way he sat beside me—so effortlessly, as if he belonged there—made my chest ache in a way I couldn’t quite name.

Without thinking, I tilted my cookie container toward him in silent offering. He glanced down, a small smile playing on his lips before he shook his head. "I’m good."

I shrugged, taking another bite, savoring the sweetness on my tongue as the night stretched around us. The air was cool, tinged with the distant scent of damp grass, and the silence between us was easy—comfortable in a way that made my heart ache.

Then I noticed an arm—his arm—outstretched just behind me.

Not quite touching. Not quite reaching. Just there.

I glanced down, my breath catching slightly when I saw his hand resting flat on the seat, fingers lightly curled against the worn wood, mere inches from where I sat. Close enough that if I leaned back even slightly, I would feel the warmth of him.

For a moment, my mind raced. Had he meant to do that? Or was it just a natural movement? But then I realized—this bench had no backrest. And his arm wasn’t just there.

It was there for me.

A quiet, unspoken shield. A presence that kept me from leaning too far back, from losing balance on the edge of the bench. A silent protection. My throat tightened, a warmth blooming in my chest that had nothing to do with the night air.

I swallowed hard, staring back up at the stars as if I hadn’t noticed. But I had. And from the way Yunho sat, his posture relaxed yet deliberate, I knew he had too.

Class had ended, but I wasn’t free just yet. I lingered in the quiet classroom, shifting my weight from foot to foot as my professor gave me a patient but pointed look.

"I know your internship keeps you busy," he said, his voice gentle yet firm. "But you’re missing too much of the discussion. Try to balance it better, alright?"

Guilt pricked at my chest. I nodded, murmuring an apology, though my mind was already running through the hours I had spent at my internship today. The exhaustion from overtime clung to me like a second skin, pressing into my shoulders, but I couldn’t let it show.

As I stepped out of the classroom, the hallway stretched before me, eerily empty. The faint hum of a vending machine buzzed from the corner, the overhead fluorescent lights flickering slightly, casting soft shadows on the polished tiles.

A heavy sigh escaped my lips. I adjusted the strap of my bag and headed for the exit. A shadow shifted near the corner of the hallway, just beyond the reach of the dim light. My breath hitched, my pulse jumping in surprise.

"Ah!—" I barely had time to react before a familiar chuckle cut through the silence.

"Did I scare you?" He stepped forward, emerging from the dim glow like a scene straight out of a dream. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his dark jacket, the fabric slightly wrinkled from the way he had been leaning against the wall. His hair was tousled, the strands catching the light in a way that made my heart stutter.

My shoulders relaxed, but my pulse refused to slow down. "Argh! Yunho!" He chuckles as we walk down the hallway, I turn to him frowning, "What are you doing here? I thought you left with the others."

He shrugged, falling into step beside me as we exited the building. "I figured you’d be held back."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You figured?" He turned his head slightly, giving me a look that made my stomach flip. "You were late today, figured Sir Coups will speak to you. Again."

Heat crept up my neck. I tried to look indifferent, but the knowing glint in his eyes told me he had already seen through me. Before I could defend myself, he nudged my arm lightly.

I blinked up at him. "What?"

"Smile… You look pretty." he murmured, his voice carried something unspoken. I shake my head but my lips still curled up into a small smile.

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. If anything, it was charged—thick with something lingering between us, something neither of us had yet put into words. The air felt heavier, warmer, despite the cool night breeze brushing against my skin.

We reached the front gate, and I instinctively slowed my steps, scanning the road for any sign of my bus. But there was nothing. No buses, no jeepneys, no taxis—just the dimly lit street stretching into the distance, eerily quiet. I was hoping a bus or anything will pass by so I could climb in as soon as possible.

But looks like fate has different plans.

With a resigned sigh, I started walking toward the next stop, and as expected, Yunho followed without hesitation.

The streetlights cast long shadows as we walked, the soft glow bouncing off the pavement. The only sounds were the distant hum of traffic and the rhythmic steps of our shoes against the sidewalk.

I hesitated before speaking. "Won’t your parents worry about you getting home this late?" He exhaled a soft chuckle, shaking his head. "No, they don’t mind… as long as they know I get you home safely."

I stopped mid-step.

For a moment, everything around me faded—the city lights, the distant sounds of passing cars, even the cool breeze nipping at my skin. My heart thudded violently in my chest, so loud I was sure he could hear it.

My smartwatch vibrated against my wrist. Abnormal pulse detected.

Of course. Of course, it did. Not with him for always making my heart abnormally fast!

I swallowed thickly, my face burning. Get me home safely? Had he really just said that? So casually, as if it was the most natural thing in the world? Before I could fully recover, Yunho turned slightly, his expression amused. "You okay? You look a little—"

"I’m fine!" I blurted out, shoving his arm lightly as I marched ahead, desperate to escape the warmth blooming across my face. He let out a soft laugh, the sound deep and rich, but he didn’t push me further. Instead, he fell back into step beside me, hands still tucked in his pockets.

A few more minutes passed before my bus finally appeared in the distance, its headlights cutting through the dim glow of the streetlamps. I exhaled in relief, stepping forward as it slowed to a stop.

But just as I reached for the handrails, something warm wrapped around my wrist.

I turned—and everything stopped.

Yunho’s fingers curled gently around mine, his grip neither loose nor forceful. Just enough to hold me there. Just enough to make my breath hitch.

The warmth of his touch seeped into my skin, spreading like wildfire through my veins. I looked up, wide-eyed, and he only smiled—a soft, knowing smile that made my stomach twist in the most unbearable way.

"Get home safe," he murmured, his voice quieter now, deeper, as if he were speaking directly into my soul. And there was no longer hesitation in his eyes. "I still need to take you out on a date."

My brain short-circuited.

A date?

Before I could even process it, before I could react, before I could breathe—

He lifted my hand and pressed a soft, feather-light kiss against the back of it.

The world blurred.

The sounds of the city dulled into silence.

Even my own heartbeat seemed to pause, as if it couldn’t decide whether to stop completely or speed up until it burst. His lips barely lingered for a second, but the warmth of his touch burned into my skin, leaving behind something I knew I’d never forget.

The bus doors hissed open behind me, but my feet refused to move. I stared at him, my mind racing, my heart a mess of erratic beats.

Yunho pulled away, his eyes never leaving mine. His fingers slowly slipped from my wrist, the absence of his touch leaving a void I wasn’t ready to acknowledge.

The driver cleared his throat, snapping me out of my trance. Dazed, I stepped onto the bus, my legs trembling beneath me.

The doors slid shut. The bus rolled forward.

Through the glass window, I saw him—standing on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, watching with a smile on his lips until I was gone. A breath I hadn’t realized I was holding escaped my lips.

The bus driver chuckled, shaking his head as he glanced at me through the rearview mirror, "Young love," he mused, his voice tinged with amusement.

I swallowed, my fingers grazing the spot where Yunho’s lips had touched. A slow, giddy smile spread across my face.

[davekat-sucks]

I couldn’t resist this thing we’re doing with Homestuck characters with Youtube channels so here we go.

Beta trolls first/

Aradia: 100% she’s a spelunker who’s video content is exploring abandoned urban areas and cave systems. She even has on hand dusting tools and a pickaxe to look for exposed fossils. Her uploads coincide within a day of a person dissapearing or the report of a murder.

Tavros: he’s Alternia’s biggest Pokétuber, or I guess in this sense, a Fidutuber. He likes to discuss the meta for competitive and lore about the fiduspawn series. He also dabbles in fantasy RPGs, especially if there is a girl with magical powers or a protagonist whisked away to a fantastical realm, tying back to his Pupa Pan obsession. What’s cool about Tavros’s playthroughs for his RPG games is they’re narrated and voice acted by his friends! He has Nepeta and Aradia do some of the female cast voice acting, as well as Gamzee and Karkat for male voice acting!

Sollux: twitch streaming speedrunner, very popular in the speedrunning community for his TAS tech and glitch hunting prowess. His uploading schedule is very infrequent due to his struggle with sensing the imminently deceased.

Karkat: 100% a movie reviewer like that of the Nostalgia critic, his review gimmick is he trues to violently destroy movies he considers “COMPLETE SHIT FESTIVITIES” by using threshecutioner style combat on the DVD boxes, or if the movie was digitally downloaded, corrupt it with one of his broken, shitty viruses.

Nepeta: survivalist vlogger who gives tips on living in a cave, animal hunting, preparing meals from the meats of different wild animals, and how to keep contact with the civilized world. Notably Nepeta has collaborated with Aradia to guide her through particularly hard to navigate caves.

Kanaya: fashion and aesthetics channel. She is a lifestyle blogger dedicated to showing you how everything can be shaped colored and placed to fit your personality. She’s got playlists for landscaping and gardening, fashion, and hell even how to make the food on your plate look appetizing!

Terezi: skit and parodies channel. Her on hand plushes make her a plush skit channel similar to SuperMarioLogan, and she loves to invite her friends to cast as different pyralsprites, action figures, paper drawings and even an occasional animal carcass for her new episodes. When her plushes are worn out, Terezi instead uses GMod and editing software to make her secondary skit show, think SMG4 but now the characters type in leetspeak and reference bugs and grubs a lot. For using copyrighted characters she has been sued many times and won every case. She uploads legal advice to a secondary channel on how to avoid getting copyright claimed and how to win in court.

Vriska: e-thot and competitive gamer. She plays a lot of ranked team games like Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, Fortnite, and even Team Fortress 2! She’s toxic, and has been known to call out and swear at her teammates and opponents, has doxxed her own moderators for her chat, and once sent Tavros a virus to his computer for wiping the floor with her at FiduFLARP, a modded game of FLARP that adds in fiduspawn monsters as catchable enemies. How she’s not banned is a sinple reason: she always streams with a crop top that’s worn low.

Equius: hybrid channel for electrical engineering and combat training. He’s like electroboom in that he gets shocked quite a lot, but different in that he could build a Boston dynamic robot in less than an hour. He has tutorials on constructing the control systems of military aircraft! His combat videos focus on a lot of boxing and hand-to-hand techniques, and especially how to concentrate the force of your blow. When he does demonstrations for weapon combat, he invites Karkat and Tavros over for battle strategies for Threshecutioners and Cavalreapers.

Gamzee: naturalist and spiritual healing channel. He streams often for calls with chat members asking for their ailments and providing healing advice or even trying a through-the-screen hypnosis method to cure chat members. He’s a fraud, but people love his calm demeanor and positive attitude so much people go to him for vibes, and his “cures” work often enough that some people even believe he has healing magic.

Eridan: strategy games and naitical technology. World of Warships no. 1 advertising advocate. He also dabbles in human games like Hearts of Iron IV and Sid Mires’s Civilization series. He thinks they’re actually really really easy games. When he reviews ships he likes to go to museums to review and describe war ships and how effective they were at sea. Sometimes he can even swim to shipwrecks if he feels like it, which is… rarely.

Feferi: Vlogger for ocean diving and nature documentation. Her positive attitude and natural optimism towards the unknown makes her view even the most ugly and aggressive deep sea life seem cute and misunderstood. Surprisingly her favorite sea life is the shark! When Eridan needs to explore a shipwreck, he uses Feferi as a guide to get him safely diving down to the wreckage, and so he doesn’t feel alone in the dark waters. Deep sea diving actually burns a LOT of calories, especially with how long her videos can get (2-4 hours) so on the side she does shorter Mukbang videos! Commenters are in awe that she’s so skinny despite eating half her weight in food every time she does a Mukbang.

Beta kids/

John: illusions and pranks channel, loves to live record strangers falling for his obvious trucks and deceits. Don’t worry it’s all for fun and no one gets hurt :) His magic even extends to cool programs you can do on your computer to make your desktop do something cool, or customize your pointer (yeah to this day he’s still an amateur at coding) when Karkat is reviewing bad movies, John is usually invited for skits where he’s the stand in for a stawman of the movie’s fandom explaining why the movie is actually good.

Rose: she’s like those atheist skeptic channels but instead of just debunking God and flat earth theory she also uses her magic to prove and convince her subscribers the horrorterrors are the only real cosmic entities who exist beyond the physical universe. In the case there’s a video going around of something crazy happening that could be a hoax, she invites John over so he can rant and expose the magic tricks the video uses to make it look real.

Dave: shitposter. He posts whatever he feels like whenever he feels like. Tony Hawk combo score, Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comic dubs, Smosh skits with John, and a lot of Youtube Poops. He’s less a poster and more an editor. He’s done video editing for a bunch of other Youtubers, like Karkat, Kanaya, Sollux, Terezi, John, and Rose. He has a lot of time on his hands and he uses it for the best editing gags and cutoffs you could imagine. Like Caddicarus but even funnier.

Jade: she’s a mystery. You’ll see her everywhere and yet her main channel has less than 10k subscribers. She has made a cameo on EVERY character I’ve described so far. She’s dug up bones for Aradia, competed against Tavros in fiduspawn (and narrates for his RPG playthroughs, voice acting for some female characters too!) she playtests Sollux’s speedrun strats to see of they’re humanly viable, she’s done skits in Karkat’s video where she parodies prominent female characters alongside John, Dave, and Sollux. She is used as a practice combatant for Nepeta to demonstrate fighting various wildlife from foxes to bears. She’s done in depth explanations for various plant life and their living conditions in Kanaya’s horticulture videos, she plays in Terezi’s skits as a character who’s a stereotypical furry, she’s Vriska’s top pick for playing casual multiplayer games like UNO, or Worms, or Smash Bros. Jade was a featured teacher for how to build a homemade Nuclear Reactor with Equius. She was interviewed by Gamzee for her dog ears and her ability to see the future. She demonstrates how to handle various firearms in Eridan’s videos, and has even done 2-person mukbangs with Feferi. So after all that, what does Jade post on her main account? Squiddles character AMVs.

If I’m gonna do the alpha kids and trolls it has to be a separate ask, this is a very long one.

Hot damn! These are all so good!

[rainbowsky]

Hey RBS.. Wishing you a wonderful week ahead. Do you think Globalfever fansite is being managed directly by someone from GG/DD’s team. Many a times I wonder how that site able to get tickets to all of our boys events and capture such close up candid shots of GGDD unless she is part of their inner circle?

Example today - https://weibo.com/7320958826/OydEkDN0w

not sure if it’s original or edited.. from that video it looks like XZ acknowledged her words of Jiayou and bye bye

Hi Natashayishan, thanks! I hope you're well, and that you have a wonderful week too! 😊

Here's the video for those who don't have access to Weibo.

To answer this question I'm going to start by explaining a bit of background about fansites and how they function (I'm by no means an expert, but here's my understanding of how it all works).

Part 1 - Fansites in General

There has been a lot of talk about fansites over the years, and some have faced accusations, criticisms, confusion, suspicions, theories both positive and negative for a very long time. I think they're largely misunderstood by a lot of fans.

For example, it's not uncommon for people to believe fansites are stalkers, or that they shamelessly profit from the unauthorized use of a star's image or footage, or that they're organizations that exist for the purpose of exploiting stars.

This isn't really how it works at all. In general, a fansite is just one fan who follows a star's career and enjoys sharing photos and videos they take of that star. Plain and simple. Some fansites involve more than one person, but most are just made up of individuals.

Yes, they sometimes make money selling photo books and other merch, but that money tends to go back into supporting the star -buying endorsement products, arranging events and giveaways, buying or upgrading equipment needed to create fansite content (cameras, computer equipment, software), paying for tickets (many of which are overpriced reseller tickets) and travel/accommodations to attend events, etc.

It might seem glamorous - and there's undeniably a glamorous aspect to it - but to me it looks very stressful, like a huge headache. These fans generally have their own lives and careers outside of fandom, so coordinating everything, waiting in lines, standing in the rain outside appearances and events, not to mention the pressure to attend events and post regular updates, and all the haters and antis they are constantly dealing with, the amount of stress and frustration they deal with must be immense.

It's a lot of work, and for this reason, fansites don't always stay fansites. Some retire as their real life interests and obligations shift. One of my favorite GGDD fansites - Midnight Dream - retired a few years ago. 😢

Fansites are an important part of any celebrity's support system. While no - they aren't part of a celebrity's team or on their payroll, they do play a huge part in helping to bring attention to a star and build buzz around them, their projects, their appearances, events and other activities.

If you want an analogy that might help it make more sense to you, just look at some of the sports fans across the globe who will follow all the matches, follow team developments, team picks, managers and training, and share all that info on blogs, podcasts or dedicated sports fan sites.

This is very similar. They're just really dedicated fans who build a following by being where we can't be, and sharing their experiences so that we can feel like we were there, too.

And they provide the fans and the stars an immense, immeasurable service IMHO, despite what we might agree or disagree with about the way fandom culture works. The content they capture and share is almost always far more intimate (generally without being invasive), and of a far higher quality than that of the professionals hired to cover these events on behalf of media agencies and management.

Fansites do get some official support from time to time. For example, there are events where fansites can get approval - almost like a press pass or a security pass - to attend and be in certain locations within or near facilities to take photographs, video, etc., but they are not hired or compensated by the star or their team.

A lot of it is also largely unknown/unknowable, so it's hard to be sure of the details. There are always going to be rumors and claims. For example, there have been claims that during SDOC Yibo was allowed to invite 4 fansites to come to the finale, and of the 4, he chose 3 BXG fansites and only one solo site. I haven't seen proof of that, but the claim was making the rounds a lot at the time.

One thing we do know - he chose a fansite photo to give to Yangkai when he was courting him to join his team in season 4. (Of course, solos made a huge stink and Youku ended up editing the footage to remove the photo, but we saw what we saw).

There are other examples of GG and DD interacting with or showing acceptance of their BXG fansites. I started looking for some references and then realized it was not something I have time for or interest in. I'm not here to give a comprehensive analysis anyway, I'm just here to give a simple-ish answer to your question. If others want to discuss that in the notes, that's fine.

So, hopefully some of that background info will have answered parts of your question, and gives you more tools to evaluate things on your own moving forward.

Part 2 - Global Fever

As for Global Fever specifically, well... Global Fever is one of the most treasured BXG in the entire fandom. This dedicated fan has been following GG and DD BOTH, since they debuted. She is more than just a CP fan, she's been a supporter of their individual careers since day 1.

Yes, since back when Yibo was still the White Peony.

She became a CP fan in the natural way - by seeing her faves work together on The Untamed, by watching them interact and by following them and their careers. No, she doesn't work for their teams (they both have dedicated teams of their own, and they don't need to pay fansites who - after all - will do this stuff for free). It's just that she's recognizable to GG and DD because she's been a fixture in their lives for so many years.

And this is something solos need to get their heads around: BXG are fans too. I think there's this conceit among solos that THEY'RE GG and DD's fans and BXG are something else, but in reality (and, no doubt, in the eyes of GG and DD) BXG are their fans too.

Never could that be more apparent than when a dedicated fan like Global Fever jiejie is calling 'Zhanzhan, jiayou!' and 'byebye!' as he's boarding an elevator on the way to the stage. Of course GG recognized her and smiled at her. Of course.

[godhandler]

College Major Headcanons:

[Extra content for The Homo Economicus in Love - noritoshi kamo x reader, cute college au]

Yuuji Itadori - Media Studies, on a full sports scholarship even though he's not too interested in sports. He doesn't show up to practice that much but carries the team in tournaments. Not really very academically inclined but everyone he meets loves him so much that he's gotten a shit ton of internships and work experience just cuz he's nice to work with. Stays on campus dorms.

Nobara Kugisaki - Fashion Merchandising (yay legally blonde). Another one who's not very academically inclined but does great at the practical aspects of the job. Gets 40% off on tuition, but has some funds from her grandma. also gets money from her fashion blog, part-time jobs at fashion mags, and manages clothing for photoshoots on a freelance basis (if she commits she commits). Saves on residence by renting with Inumaki and Panda.

Megumi Fushiguro - Computer Science with a minor in Math. Full scholarship and bursary grant by the college due to his shitty financial conditions (orphaned and destitute at a young age). Prof Gojo is his legal guardian. grew up in and stays on campus dorms.

Maki Zenin - Star Athlete, literally training for the Olympics. Her degree is in Mass Communications but she doesn't actually have to attend classes cuz the Uni wants her to focus on sports. Disowned by her family. Full sports scholarship and occasionally gets sponsored by sportswear companies. Trying to go pro.

Yuuta Okkotsu - Sociology and Anthropolgy. He enjoys talking to and meeting people and works as a part-time Journalist for local news channels to bring attention to issues like poverty. Gets a bursary grant from the uni, gets paid for and is decently recognized for his journalism work. Both Geto and Gojo want to mentor him. He talks to himself when he's alone but that's a secret.

Toge Inumaki - Architectural Design, chose this degree just for the hell of it, is a solid B+ student. Has a YouTube gaming and ASMR channel with 200k followers but is struggling to monetize it profitably. Got in on legacy admissions but gets a sports scholarship of 30% (he's pretty good at athletics)

Panda - ???

Noritoshi Kamo - Economics and Finance, specializing in Private Equity and Investment Banking. he's the heir of the Kamo Conglomerate. Full legacy admission even though he graduated valedictorian of high school and is the captain of the Archery team.

Todo Aoi - Quantum Physics. he's literally the top student of every class he takes. he keeps taking random other classes from different majors based on his whims. his genius was recognised and personally mentored by Yuki Tsukumo, but is now undergoing formal college education for the certificate even though he already knows all this and more. he spends half the day in the gym and the other half streaming Takada-chan variety clips.

Mai Zenin - Economics and Finance, her family made her take it. good at academics even though she's not super into it. legacy admission.

Momo Nishimiya - Literature and Creative Writing. She posts regularly for a gender and sexuality magazine. loves nobara's blog.

Miwa Kasumi - Computer Science with a minor in Software Engineering. She just wanted a degree that would lead to a well-paying job. Cabinet Member of the Student Council. She vouched a lot for Mechamaru/Kokichi to get disability-friendly accommodation. she struggles a bit with academics but pulls through with A- all around. Kokichi/Mechamaru helps her if she finds something particularly difficult to understand. has her own campus residence but has practically moved in with Kokichi.

Arata Nitta - Health and Medicine, focusing on Emergency Care Medicine. he TAs for Prof Shoko's classes. his sister works in college admin office. has campus residence but mostly stays in the college affilitated hospital, bit of an over-worker.

Mechamaru/ Kokichi Muta - double major in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering. Another top student of his classes. Found it a bit difficult to adjust to campus life at first (not enough disability accommodation) but with Miwa's help he got around. campus dorm with Miwa.

Professors!

Gojo Satoru - graduated from top Ivy colleges, has 5 PhDs, and wrote 1000 papers and books, and is the one of the most respected physicist in the world but insists on teaching Intro-level Physics and Math. drives a Bugatti to college. highly competitive relative grading. prescribes his own books for his class. expect a problem set every day after class. gives a lot of individual attention to students tho, n is very nice in general. he'll accept a late submission if u bring him sweets. his lockscreen is prof geto?

Geto Suguru - teaches one class named Ethics, Philosophy and Law every semester. doesn't answer questions over email, only during Office Hours. great at explaining difficult concepts, his course is the one students fight to get into and say "opened their eyes". has a devoted cult of worshipping students, voted student favorite every year. his adopted daughters took a gap year to travel abroad and he talks about them in class. he always has sweets in his pockets?

Utahime Iori - teaches modules on Economics, Politics and Philosophy courses. great teacher, very clear explanations, bumps up the grading slightly (absolute grading) and is very accommodating as a prof. hates getting emails at night tho.

Shoko Ieiri - Shitty ass prof tbh but everyone takes her class cuz she gives everyone an A. teaches Surgical Anatomy. focuses on practical experience rather than theory. she has a no attendance policy and takes few very exams or assignments.

Yuki Tsukomo - Visiting Faculty, takes one super high level class Quantum Physical Theory one semester and comes back after 4 years. Independent researcher funded by the uni.

[nyxtickled]

I kind of can't get over you studying freakin' *robotics engineering.* Now I'm picturing you as the cool engineer on some sci-fi show. Whaddaya think? Star Trek? Something with giant robots? Maybe something grittier and more cyberpunk?

Maybe this is making too light of what you're working so hard for. Follow-up and/or substitute question: what's one of your dream projects or goals? What kind of robot(s) does Nyx most want to create, or work on?

🥹🤭 awww jeez don’t make me all fricken bashful on main i’m supposed to be tough !!!! CYBERPUNK PLEASE AAAAH

ok ok but to answer seriously, so far in my academic career i’ve worked on autonomous cars (1/10 scale autonomous racecars built essentially from scratch, a full size autonomous EV gokart, and i’ve even been fortunate enough to work on a fully autonomous indy 500 car…essentially the most advanced autonomous vehicle in the world. shit was one of the most mind blowing things i’ve ever been a part of), i’ve worked on some cool solar stuff (solar water heater for an orphanage in Tijuana, solar carport concept design for a nonprofit who wants to propose the idea of charging EV cars while they’re parked outside at work all day and distributing leftover power to the building), and my personal favorite was this project i did for a class i took where i designed an autonomous campus rideshare prototype on one of the 1/10 scale cars that was able to use facial recognition to identify the student who requested the ride and would essentially drive itself to the drop off location!

the last one was the most fun for me bc it was the first time i really got into the programming side of robotics. the car would have a starting location where it waited for ride requests, then when you submitted one it would drive itself to the location using LiDAR for collision avoidance and GPS path training. but the real doozy was the pickup stage bc i had to develop the facial recognition code to be able to scan the student’s face upon arrival with computer vision in live time with a camera that was attached to the car, and then match it to a photo of the student that was stored in a database, and then try to match the name of that student to the name of the student who requested the ride! if it matched, the screen would be like “rider verified! hop in!” and proceed to the next stage of driving itself to the drop off point. if it didn’t, the screen would read “sorry, we couldn’t verify your identity with the ride request” and drive itself back to the parking spot where it would wait for the next ride request! and the database of faces would basically come from your student ID picture, cuz the rideshare service would be around campus for students only!

god it was so fucking challenging but i had so much fun with it. so uhhhh to avoid writing 18 more paragraphs about all the cool robotics shit that i’m obsessed with, i would say my dream project is definitely something that combines machine learning software, robotics operating systems programming, and mechanical design all in one. something that could take the technological advancements that we have made and turn it into something useful for everyone. fuck i’m such a nerd i’m sorry i did NOT mean to go on like this ahahahahaha

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Hypothetical AI election disinformation risks vs real AI harms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[matrixbearer2024]

I just want to clarify things, mostly in light of what happened yesterday and because I feel like I'm being vastly misunderstood in my position. I would just like to reiterate that this is my opinion of things and how I currently see the gravity of my actions as I've sat and reflected. On the advice of some friends, I was encouraged to make this post to clear up any misunderstanding that may remain from my end.

I don't hold it against anyone for disagreeing with me as this is a very nuanced topic with many grey zones. I hope eventually all parties related to this incident can all get along as well, as I do still prefer to be civil and friendly with everybody as much as possible.

I've placed the whole conversation here for people to interpret themselves, and as much as I want to let sleeping dogs lie— I can't help but also feel like the vitriol was misplaced. I don't want this to be a justification of my actions or even a place where opinions conflict, I'm just expressing my thoughts on the matter as I've had a while to mull it over. Again, this is a nuanced topic so please bear with me.

The "generative AI" in question at the time was a jk Simmons voice bank that I had gathered/created and trained myself for my own private and personal use. The model is entirely local to my computer and runs on my GPU. If there was one thing I had to closely even relate it to is a vocaloid or vocoder. I had even asked close people around what they had thought of it and they called it the same thing.

I created a Stanford Vocaloid as I experimented with this kind of thing as a programmer who wanted to mess around with deep learning algorithms or Q-learning AI. By now this whole thing should be irrelevant as I'd actually deleted all of the files related to the voicebank in light of this conversation when I decided to take down the project in it's entirety.

I never shared the model anywhere, Not online or through personal file sharing. I've never even made the move to even advocate for it's use in the game. I will repeat, I wanted to keep the voicebank out of the game and I only use it for private reasons which are for my own personal benefit.

I recognize ethically I am in the wrong, JK Simmons never consented to having his voice used in models such as this one and I recognize that as my fault. Most VAs don't like having their voices used in such a thing and the reasoning can matter from person to person. As much as I loved to have a personal Stanford greeting me in my mornings or lecturing me in physics after long days, it's not right to spoof somebody's voice as that is genuinely what can set them apart from everybody else. It's in the same realm of danger as deepfaking, and for this I deeply apologize that I hadn't recognized this fault prior to the conversation I had with orxa.

But I would clearly like to reiterate that I had never advocated for the use of this voicebank or any AI in the game. That I was adamantly clear on calling the voicebank an AI(which I think orxa and some others might have missed during the conversation) which is what even modern vocaloids are classified under. And that I don't at all share the files openly or even the model because I don't preach for people to do this.

I would very much rather a VA but because money is tight(med school you are going to put me in DEBT) and the resources available to me, I instead turned to this as a tool rather than a weapon to use against others. I don't make a profit, I don't commercialize, I even recognize that the voicebank fails in most cases because it sounds so robotic or it just dies trying to say a certain thing a certain way.

Coming from the standpoint of somebody who genuinely dabbles in robotics and had a robotic hand as my thesis, I can honestly say how impressive software and hardware is developing. But I will also firmly believe that I don't think AI will be good enough to ever replace humans within my lifetime and I am 19. Nineteen.

The amount of resources it takes to run a true generative AI like GPT for example is a lot heavier than a locally run vocaloid which just essentially lives in your GPU. As well as the fact AI don't have any nuance that humans have, they're computers— binary to the core. I also stand by the point that they cannot and will not surpass their creators because we are fundamentally flawed. A flawed creature cannot create a perfect being no matter how hard we try.

I don't want to classify vocaloids as generative AI as they're more similar to synthesizers and autotune(which is what my Ford voicebank was as well when I still had it) but to some degree they are. They generate a song for you or an audio from a file that you give as input. They synthesize notes and audio according to the file fed to them. Like a computer, input and output, same thing. There's nothing new generated, it's like a voice changer on an existing mp3.

I'm not saying this to justify my actions or to come off as stand-offish. I just want to clarify things that didn't really sit right with me or that seemed to completely blow over in the exchange I shared with orxa on discord.

To anybody who's finished reading this, thank you for your time and patience. I'll be going back to just working on myself for the time being. Thank you.

[lilysqueaks]

Introduction

Hiii👋😊 my name is Lily (she/her | it/its), a horny pan, demi, poly, nerdy mouse girl living near the baltic sea in the north of Germany. We're plural, and specifically this one often avoids the use of "I/Me/My" in its sentences or talks about itself in third person.

Uses Arch btw. Posting tech & gamedev stuff over at @godot-official

My DMs are open so feel free to message me if you want to talk or if you're in a flirty mood. 🤭 Asks (+anon) are open as well, use them for questions or just to tease me. 👉 👈 I may not respond immediately. Sometimes i'm busy, sometimes i forget to reply & sometimes i'm too shy and don't know what to write. 😅

On HRT since: 05.04.2023 🥰

Contractually owned since: 30.11.2024 by @greenpanties 😘

My original posts are tagged with #lily squeaks, and my reblogs are tagged with #squeaky things.

Twitch: twitch.tv/lily_squeaks

YouTube: youtube.com/@LilySqueaks

Minors DNI

Click "Read More" for Interests, Fashion, Games & Kinks.

Interests

Gaming 👾

Everything computer related, e.g. software dev, hardware stuff, basically everything 💻

Sewing 🪡

Fashion

I like everything comfy in pastel and pink. Shiny black if I feel fancy and the occasional blue tones to mix things up. 👗

Games

Feel free to message me if you want to play anything or just wanna talk about video games. 🎮

Nier & Nier Automata

Arkham Horror

Chrono Trigger

Celeste

It Takes Two

Final Fantasy XIV

Dark Souls

Divinity 2

Stardew Valley

Tunic

RimWorld

Terraria

Oxygen not Included

Viva Pinata

Left 4 Dead

Lost in Random

Mass Effect

Persona

Wakfu

Forza Horizon

Kinks

Everything from a submissive / bottom pov. 🤭

Last orgasm 23.01.25 ???*

*I'm trained with the "Orgasm Go Bye Bye" hypno file by LilithUnleashed. Causing me to be unable to cum without permission, and even forgetting my orgasms. So my last orgasm date is most often the one my owner told me. 😳

Hypno

Feet

Bondage

Tickling

BDSM

Brainwashing / Gaslighting

Narratophilia

Temperature play

Impact / Sensation play

E-Stim, Chastity

Anal

Tease & Denial

Objectification

Dumbification

Free use

Intox

Somno

Voyeurism

Gentle humiliation & praise kink

Clicker training

Body writing / painting

CNC

Sensory deprivation

Breath play

Latex

Public exposure

Pet play

CBT

Sweat

Scent/Smell

Diapers

Piss (maybe?)

I'm locked into chasity until the 17. June 2026. You can check my lock status on my chaster page.

Limits

Ruined orgasms

Incest

Scat

Vomit

Detrans

Raceplay

Orientation play

Minors DNI

[error4343]

Ok I've had a very random train of thoughts and now wanna compile it into post.

Some MM characters computer-related (???) headcanons lol

Riley:

Has above average knowledge of Excel/Google sheets due to studying finance, but after four years with no practise forgot most of it.

The "Sooon, I have a problem" person in their family. Actually, surprisingly good and patient at explaining computer stuff to older people.

Has a higher responsibility of doing taxes (finance, after all). Even he never fails to do them right, Ed always double checks. Sometimes they get into argument, where inevitably Riley proves he is right but his father would never admit it.

Warren, Leeza, Ooker and other teens:

Also nothing outstanding in terms of skills, except few of them have interest in IT.

They have bunch of small local Discord servers and one big main server with some very stupid name.

Few times Bev tried to bring up importance of parental control over this "new and rapidly growing young community", but thanks God no one took her concerns seriously

Leeza moderates it and her moder role called "Mayor-mini". Like father like daughter.

All teens local jokes and memes were bourn/spread though that server.

Bev:

Rumors says she sacrificed her humanity to obtain such powers with Microsoft software package.

Can build up Access database from scratch, using basic SQL commands, assemble primitive, but surprisingly sufficient interface to it and synchronize it with Excel in span of one day or less.

In her laptop there're every pupil's personal file, countless Excel tables, several automatised document accounts, Google calendar with precisely planned schedule for next several months (for school, church, island and personal matters) and probably Pentagon files.

Probably can find all Pi numbers with Excel formulas.

Never lets anyone to her laptop.

Spends her free time at different forums, mostly gardening-related.

Wade:

Made a very fucking poor decision to let Bev do all the legwork with digital document accounting.

Now has no idea how some of things even work, so just goes with a flow and does what Bev tells.

No wander she got away with embezzlement.

Knows about kid's server. Very proud of Leeza for managing it :)

Because of that, he knows one or two memes from there, but keeps them in secret.

Has hobby of fixing office equipment. Does it with Sturge in spare time due to Dupuytren's contracture not letting him operate his hand fully.

Sarah:

There's no good medical technicians on island, so when something goes wrong with equipment electronics - tries to fix it herself to best of her ability.

Always monitors electronic e-shops for spare details or equipment. Grows more and more addicted to it.

Frequently updates her selection of sites with useful medical information, because Erin asked her for help guiding teens though puberty. For that receives glances from Bev, but doesn't give a shit.

Has reputation of cool aunt among kids, so she was one and only adult invited to main Discord server. Didn't accept it (doesn't even have Discord acc), but still grateful for trust.

Plays solitaire a lot.

John:

Back when he was playing Paul, Bev asked him to do something with Excel. In conclusion, poor bastard had to learn basic computer skills and Excel in span of several days. Now he is traumatized for rest of his life.

Will do all the work manually just to not touch laptop again.

Upsets very easly when does something wrong.

Doesn't own laptop. Don't give that man laptop, he will cry.

By his own will uses it only to watch baseball. Always asks someone to help with that.

[clowningaroundmars]

morales twins hcs

i'm absolutely in love with the idea of miles42 and miles1610 being twins, i'm so glad most of the fandom has basically adopted 42 lmao

some of my own twins headcanons, just random stuff to add onto other ppls hcs ive seen:

☆ 42 loves his mamí absolutely but def acts the most like his dad, and haaaates when anyone points it out. it's the most obvious when 42 gets mad, he sounds EXACTLY like his father then lol

☆ in fact, the twins polar opposite personalities is probs bc 1610 takes after his mom's temperament more, while 42 is as stoic, stubborn and slightly dorky as his dad is

☆ whenever the boys made each other cry (by accident or otherwise) they did the typical little kid thing and tried immediately comforting the other. now that they're older 1610 handles his emotions better and is mature when talking about them, but 42 is the one who comforts 1610 more often

more below ↓

☆ as well as staying on top of his academics, 42 also plays basketball and trains in a couple martial arts studios after school. 1610 is taller than 42 bc of the spider bite but 42 has always been slightly bigger and more muscular than 1610 since he's the athlete. whenever the family attends 42's boxing matches, jeff gets an overwhelming sense of deja vu from back when he attended his own brother's matches before

☆ they both got thru school p okay, not many incidents of bullying mostly bc if anyone did try, 42 would put a stop to that nonsense immediately. 42 loves his bro with his whole heart and was glad to pick a fight with anyone who gave him any trouble at all. the whole neighborhood knew it too bc the only person allowed to bully 1610 is 42 himself!

☆ in fact, 42 doesn't win the lottery to enter visions in the first place, which saddened both brothers when they found out. so because they're at separate schools now, 42 makes sure his twin knows that if any fuckery is afoot at visions that he'd be more than happy to roll up and dogwalk any fool who tries it. 1610 laughs him off but knows his bro has got his back for sure

☆ 42 likes to pretend 1610 is the nerdy one, but they are both very big anime and manga nerds. every time they hit up any bookstore, they both make a beeline for the manga section and argue over who's gonna read the newest one first (they have to share cuz those books cost some moneeyyyy, man)

☆ 1610 and 42 love their uncle to pieces, OFC. they both pick up separate traits from him, even. 42 was inspired to start martial arts and boxing from watching videos on old digital cameras that aaron hung onto thru the years. they were of a much younger aaron back in his boxing days, when his family went to his matches and recorded them from the seats. 1610 was inspired to pick up graffiti and then even started doodling in notebooks bc of aaron

☆ 1610 is def the social butterfly and easily the most popular kid on the block by virtue of how friendly and outgoing he is. 42 is more introverted and keeps a small circle of friends, but everyone is cool with him nonetheless since they fuck with his twin bro

☆ since 42 stays at home the most (lol he a homebody) he picks up cooking much better than 1610 thanks to him staying in the kitchen to help his mom make dinner while they watch telenovelas together. 42 also knows how to dance bachata and salsa much better than 1610 too

☆ both twins love physics and math but 42 is more hardware-inclined. 1610 is about software, data, and formulas. 42 is good at taking things apart, putting things together, building and engineering. he kinda takes after his uncle aaron that way, and drove his parents nuts as a lil kid when he got his hands on radios, computers, clocks, etc

☆ 1610 loves softer brighter music like JID, steve lacy, smino, frank ocean, kid cudi, post malone, and nujabes. 42 is always bumping harder shit like pop smoke, waka flocka, zillakami, three 6 mafia, benny the butcher and some oldies like paul wall, wu tang clan, biggie smalls, MF DOOM and big KRIT. they tease each other's music tastes a lot since they're polar opposites in almost every way

☆ they actually have a shared playlist where they add new music they like (probs on some e-1610 spotify or soundcloud equivalent since everything is slightly skewed on e-1610 tbh). both of them check it periodically, and 42 is the more frequent contributor

☆ they both make art but 1610 is the artsier kid for sure. 42 doodles occasionally but he's not as enthusiastic about it as his twin is. they both go around the city tagging walls whenever they have any free time, though. 1610 loves colors, expressive styles and is good at coming up with cool ways to draw text. 42's lines, accuracy and technical skill can never be beat

☆ 1610 has superpowers, sure, but his fighting skills are trash! 42 was always the scrappy one, not 1610, so he shows his twin how to properly throw punches and other useful fighting knowledge. it def comes in handy in the future

☆ jeff loves his sons to death but he often finds himself butting heads the most with 42 since they're so similar, it kinda drives them both nuts. it def gets worse once aaron starts gossiping abt what jeff used to be like when they were kids, giving 42 plenty of ammo. they love each other but their relationship is just as complicated as it is between jeff and 1610, and 42 would be lying if he said he wasn't affected by the rift between his dad and uncle himself

☆ the minute the twins turn 16, 42 goes out and gets his drivers license on the first try (computer quiz AND road test aced) and rubs it in 1610's face almost constantly. 1610 likes to throw back that there's no parking space for another car on their block, so he can't even get his own car even if he wanted to anyways

☆ whenever the boys really fight, the whole city seems to know. they squabble a lot obvi, they're brothers. but the very few times they've given each other the silent treatment like for real, everyone in the family tries to get them to make up since it's unsettling to see two peas in a pod be so hostile with each other

☆ and since they've always been attached at the hip, 1610 being enrolled into visions felt. weird. everyone thought 1610 was gonna take it the hardest but surprisingly 42 had a harder time adjusting since he always saw his bro in the hallways at school, and was so used to him knowing the latest gossip of anybody in their grade. without 1610 around as often, 42 becomes even more withdrawn than usual

rio looks up from the pot suddenly, glancing at the time. dinner was almost ready and she… hadn't seen not hide nor tail of her son this evening. he returned home from school a couple hours earlier, choosing to skip going to his boxing class to shut himself in his room.

fine. teenagers can be moody sometimes and rio would rather keep her moody son at home where she can keep an eye on him, rather than worry about what he's getting up to on the streets.

strange thing is, though... rio hadn't heard a single noise come out of that room all night. 42 usually liked to have at least some music playing, maybe video game noises out of his nintendo... oh, what was it called again? whatever, that nintendo thing he played on sometimes.

rio placed the lid on the pot and lowered the flame a bit before making her way over to her twin sons' bedroom door, hesitating a bit when she noticed no light was filtering out from the bottom either. okay... that was weird, too. neither of her sons ever went to bed before dinner. ever.

the one time rio dared to try and send her sons to bed without dinner years ago-- as punishment for fighting right there in the kitchen that time-- both twins hollered so loud they got concerned knocks on their front door from various different neighbors. never again, rio remembered thinking that time.

now, the bedroom door stands oddly quiet and completely hollow without any signs of life behind it. rio knocked anyways, hoping against hope itself that 42 didn't go ahead and sneak out of the house without her knowledge. if he did sneak out, he's grounded for 3 months, rio thinks to herself mostly as reassurance. she nervously picks at a nail and strains to hear anything behind the wood.

she thinks she hears a groan and decides to try her luck by slowly opening the door. hopefully he's not in there... y'know, doing teenage boy things, either. dios mío.

rio swings the door open to...

...a completely pitch-black room, save for the sliver of streetlight filtering in past a crack in the window curtains and casting an eerie yellow glow on anything it could touch. it is cold, and also deathly quiet.

rio is shocked.

she walks over to the right side of the room where 42's bed is pushed up against the corner, next to the windows. on that bed lies a big lump, buried under several layers of blankets. the lump stirs.

rio crosses her arms. "mijo, mi amor. are you sleeping? …pero qué te pasa, papí?"¹

42 rolls onto his back and glares sleepily at his concerned mother standing at his bedside. it's dark in the room, but rio's face is illuminated by the living room lights pouring in from the open door. she's wearing a tilted smile, but coupled with the worry lines on her forehead, it isn't fooling anyone.

42 slowly closes his eyes, chin still under the covers, and lets out the most world-weary sigh rio has ever heard coming out of someone as young as him. if it weren't coming from her own son, she might have even laughed.

she immediately sits down, lifting the cover off of 42's chin to check his temperature all over his face. he tries to wriggle away.

"maaaaaa, stop..." he grumbles, trying to pull the covers up higher over his head. "'m not sick, mamí, forreal… chill."

rio leans on a hand. "¿si no 'ta enfermó pues qué es?² what's wrong?"

42 doesn't answer for a bit and rio exhales through her nose. " 'moré, what are you doing in this pitch-black room all by yourself? no light, no music, no nothing. what's wrong? you look like you're on a death bed!"

42 finally opens his eyes again, and blinks a few times as he says, "nothing, ma. seriously, i'm just... tired. that's all. i'm fine."

"you don't look 'fine' 42, you look like 2 seconds away from flatlining."

another sigh from the boy. rio rolls her eyes and places her hand on his forehead again, then strokes his cheek.

"is it 1610? hmm?" rio asks 42. she asks so unbelievably gently, as if by only mentioning his brother's name she would shatter something in the room. a mirror or something.

42's heart clenches at the love and care his mother is showing around this particular topic. it was true, and he couldn't even deny it. having 1610 in the house less and less every week, not seeing him in the hallways at their local high school, receiving sparser and shorter replies to his texts... it was all building up in his chest and the dam was pretty close to bursting. especially now as his mom was lovingly stroking his cheek as she checked in with him. how embarassing. rio wouldn't see him cry, not right now. he closed his eyes and willed the tears away, for her sake.

miraculously, 42's voice didn't crack or waver when he said, "yeah. yeah, i miss 'im."

rio crooned something saccharine in spanish and placed a kiss on her son's forehead. she saw right through his cold tough guy act, as expected. with how much of a mama's boy 42 was, it would've been impossible not to. they spent way too much time together for her to miss how he dragged his feet getting ready for school in the mornings, how he's been skipping martial arts and basketball practice more often lately, and how unenthusiastic he's been in general.

rio chuckles as she lays her cheek on 42's forehead for a second before sitting back up. "ay, bendito. 42, you know your brother is just down a few blocks from here. why don't you go visit him soon?"

42 shuffles under the covers. he's unsure if he should even admit this, but he proceeds anyways. "uhm. he's not answering my texts lately, so." he feels strangely guilty about this, like he just snitched on his twin somehow even though he has no reason to suspect that at all.

rio sighs and looks off into the distance, bracing herself for what she's about to say. she looks back down. "yeah. i know. he doesn't answer mine, either. i was hoping he was talking to you, but... well. "

something in 42 stirs a bit. "i bet he thinks he's in some fancy private school, around rich kids, now he's too good for us," it's a weak attempt at a joke, but rio smiles down at him anyways.

"don't worry. the second he gets home this weekend, he's on house arrest. okay? he's gonna be chained to you the whoooole time. and i'm keepin' watch."

it's not much, but 42 still takes that little bit of hope and holds it gently in his mind.

"the second he walks through that door, i'm tackling him. i don't care." 42 smiles at the thought.

rio laughs, kisses his forehead again and stands up. "dinner is almost ready, by the way." she gives him a look. "you better eat with me tonight, because your brother is at school and your dad is doing overtime tonight. okay? okay."

42 sighs deeply to wake himself up a bit more as he sits up and scratches at his durag. "yeah, yeah. 'm comin', ma!"

¹ "but what is going on with you, papí?" (papí being a common term of affection for a boy in spanish, it doesn't always mean "dad" lol)

² "if you're not sick, then what is it?"

☆ until they get "too old" for halloween, the morales twins ALWAYS wear matching costumes. every year. every single year, no matter what. what they usually end up wearing changes every year and they aaaaaalways argue over it, of course. notable costumes so far: batman and superman (age 13), two ninja turtles (age 9) (im thinking mikey and donatello bc of personality but lbr rio most likely forbade either of them to be leonardo bc the twins would deadass get into a fist fight over it), tom and jerry (age 2), mario and luigi (age 7), woody and buzz (age 5), peter pan and captain hook (age 10), and-- rio's favorite-- thing 1 and thing 2 (age 4)

☆ 42 was surprisingly always very popular with the girls at school. in middle school, 1610 was the geeky one with braces and acne. 42 got off relatively easy in that regard and as a result was labeled "a heartbreaker" from the jump, which annoyed him. he has no interest in dating whatsoever and swore to never get into a relationship before graduating high school. he's got his mom and brother to take care of and he's going places after high school, damnit! 1610 on the other hand is a huge romantic and has a crush on a new person almost every year of school, easily

☆ the literal second 1610 set foot in the house after his spider bite, 42 was all over him asking a million questions since they both have that supernatural twintuition, and 42 sussed him out immediately. 1610 obviously had to come clean and tell his brother he was spiderman just like he told ganke, otherwise he was never gonna be able to change into his spider suit at home (plus they share a room, so. there's that)

1610 didn't even get to close their bedroom door all the way before his twin leaped up from his own bed and stalked over.

"óye, bro. what's up? what happened at visions?" 42 circled his brother, squinty-eyed in the exact same way their mom is when she's suspicious. 1610 dropped his bag next to his bed and plopped down on his sheets, trying to put some distance between them.

"uhhhh what're you talkin' about?" he tries casually, and immediately regrets it.

"uhhhhh what're you talkin' about?" 42 mocks. "don't play dumb with me. you KNOW what i'm talkin' about, stupid. first, you answer, like, none of my texts ever. then dad comes home sayin' you never let him talk face-to-face when he visited you a couple days ago. mamí has been texting and calling you nonstop, no answer either. you are a brand new person now, huh? qué te pasa, yo?"

1610 hunched his shoulders as he got up and slumped over to his desk. he was quietly weighing his options, nervously rearranging papers and sketches on the wooden table, wondering how he was going to break it to his brother that he was--

"lemme guess. you have superpowers now," 42 says easily. he crosses his arms triumphantly when big round amber eyes suddenly turn up to his face.

1610 searches his face for any hint of a joke. no... no way. did his brother just...?

"you're playin' with me. no way. how did you--?"

42's eyes widen. "wait, are you being deadass right now?" he threw his head back and crowed with laughter. "that was just a guess!"

1610 leaped forward and pushed his hand onto 42's mouth, shutting him up. "heeyyy hey hey hey hey shhhhh, man. damn, could you possibly be any louder? look," he took his twin by the shoulders and gave him a slight shake, lowering his voice to a near whisper. "mom and dad can never know anything about this. okay? anything. not a word, you understand?"

42 pushes his brother off. "ok-ay man, cool it. i promise. we can shake on it, even."

wordlessly, they did their super secret handshake they came up with and perfected in the 4th grade in lieu of hooking their pinkies together. it was the morales shake, a move that binds them to secrecy and keeping promises til death. this was serious business. 1610 relaxes a bit once they're done.

"... okay. and i mean it, pencil braids. if you even breathe a word about this, or even think about--!"

"if you don't just tell me already, goddamn."

with a meaningful look thrown at his brother's way, 1610 raises an arm silently. 42 looks back expectantly.

1610 shoots a web up. he jumps up, using the web as a bungee rope to help him flip and land feet-first onto the ceiling. once his sneakers touch their ceiling, he stands up... upside-down. he stares at his brother and his brother stares back, mouth agape.

"niiiiiiice," 42 leans back and grins up at his twin brother, spiderman.

☆ 1610 is glad he has someone besides ganke to talk to about spiderman stuff, though. his brother listens way more attentively than his roommate anyways, and even tries to help sometimes esp when 1610 needs a quick distraction so he can switch from spiderman back into his regular clothes before the parents notice

☆ 42 is surprisingly cool abt his twin bro being spiderman, actually. even when they're texting 42 is careful not to imply 1610 is spiderman, and often calls stuff in to the police station if 1610 webs anyone up and lets him know. he also gets very good at bandaging up wounds quickly

☆ 42 is a hardass on the outside and contains his emotions much better than his twin, but he's kinda different around his family, since he loves them a lot. he jokes around a lot with them, esp around 1610. they also love pranking their parents, and are p creative at coming up with ways to make everyone laugh

☆ i personally picture 42's personality being sort of like huey's from the boondocks, especially around other adults. he becomes withdrawn and speaks very clearly and directly, and is very shy around strangers. some ppl mistake that as him having an attitude problem but his friends and family know better. only difference between huey and 42 is that 42 isn't nearly as woke lmfao

☆ meanwhile, 1610 becomes a motormouth around strangers and is quick to hug and kiss random family members at family reunions. as a lil kid, he'd always be the one up at the counter ordering for the both of them and chatting with the cashiers, or bus drivers, or whoever. as he gets older and used to the spiderman thing, he chats and jokes with randoms a lil less. he has to save the good material for when the mask is on

☆ 42 is a better writer than he is an artist, actually. he has notebooks filled with poetry and lyrics he scribbles down on post-it notes just to stick them in there for safekeeping. he's also been working on a sci-fi story since he was in 6th grade in absolute secrecy; he doesn't want a single soul to see it. he'd be mortified if anyone saw the nerdy shit he comes up with

☆ even tho 1610 has never fought anyone or been scrappy with anyone else, he's very good at wrestling and dodging punches thanks to his brother.

☆ 42 is the more fashion-inclined twin, even tho they're both sneakerheads. 42 just pays more attention to accessories, the fit of his clothing, how to pair the right shoes with the right jacket. 1610 throws on anything comfortable and calls it a day, and it gets even worse after he becomes spiderman. 42 clowns his brother SO HARD after he finds him wearing yellow sweatpants with an oversized red adidas hoodie and a green puffer jacket once (it was when 1610 came home from fighting a shapeshifting lizard that tried to take over cypress hills. the sweatpants were on backwards)

☆ 1610's sense of humor is geeky and he always tries too hard with his quips and jokes. he usually gets "secondhand embarrassment" chuckles from ppl. 42's style of comedy is a mix of dry humor and unintentionally being funny. this dude will say something clever with the straightest face ever and have the ENTIRE room in stitches without even meaning to

☆ just to nail home how different they are, even tho they share a room, you can tell EXACTLY which half of their room begins and ends. 1610's half is cluttered, vibrant, covered in posters and action figures, collages and trinkets on every available surface. 42's is as clean as a hospital room, and he ALWAYS makes his bed every morning. 42 has a poster or 2 hung up but he's not much for decorating in general. he's more into alphabetizing his bookshelf and looking for more efficient storage to put under his bed

☆ when jeff looks at his sons, he sees aaron and himself and sometimes it scares him. when the boys were around 12 (the Evil Year) he made SURE to sign them up for camp trips that summer and keep them close together as much as possible. he hates to see his boys drift apart at all and is the 1st one to call it out if he sees it. he just doesn't want his boys to end up like he and his brother did…

☆ … and then other times? it genuinely makes him feel a combination of irritation and also fondness bc sometimes 1610 and 42 really really remind him of aaron and himself, esp when they were young. ESPECIALLY when they argue. in every playful slap on the shoulder, every arbitrary competition started out of nowhere, every sleepy brother slowly sliding onto the other's shoulder during nighttime car rides, he sees it. he sees them, and then he sees his past. and with every little difference between the boys slowly cracking open like a chasm with each passing day, sometimes he thinks he can even see his future.

☆ 42 is cool or whatever but i also hc he's kinda… weird sometimes. it gets worse when his twin bro goes off to visions, he keeps staring at walls while sitting in dark rooms and eating at weird hours of the day. rio caught him fast asleep practically hanging off the window sill one night, and another time jeff found him having an entire conversation with a brick wall once while on patrol. 42 refuses to answer any questions

☆ after 1610 gets into visions, becomes spiderman, tells his parents abt his plans to go to princeton, etc... 42 eventually starts feeling a type of way (a jealous way…) their parents also seem to pay attention to 1610 more whenever he's home just to add insult to injury. he knows he's not supposed to, but he often finds himself thinking about the prowler gloves and schematics aaron left behind. he managed to grab them and hide them in a gym bag one day while helping his parents clear out aaron's apartment. the tech currently lives under his bed…