#plexure

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 6: Plexure 🪢

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Plexure (n.)

the act or process of weaving together, or interweaving; that which is woven together

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I opted to keep things a little more simple for today…Yet I’m still posting late-ish & feel a bit -un-woven myself because I kept noticing dumb mistakes in the final image that I had to fix. 😅

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk more about my thoughts/process for this piece (dumb mistakes aside) ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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Ironically, I feel my brain is coming a bit unwoven at the moment because while I technically finished today's mandala much, much earlier, when I sat down to start the upload process, I kept noticing really dumb mistakes or oversights I had to go back and fix. 🙃

Ignoring that, I am once again really pleased with these results. "Interweaving" didn't give me a ton of super strong imagery to work with, so I opted to stay true to that keep things simple.

I was kinda worried "just woven lines" wouldn't be visually interesting enough and might be a little too similar to how angular yesterday's mandala was, so I did linger and tinker with certain things a little longer than I otherwise would have on that front. In particular, those interlocked squares near the corners were probably the biggest pain to draw out of the whole thing, but I feel like they add a lot and that's why I even bothered with them.

There were also several false starts to include more curves (again, to help separate from yesterday's piece) but you can see they largely failed. I just couldn't come up with an arrangement that felt like it fit with this concept. The only curves that survived are the really thin ones in those squares I mentioned and then the "soft" triangles I used between weaving lines.

Those soft triangles were a very spur-of-the-moment idea trying to provide some visual relief from all the hard edges and angles. But I really like how, especially hatched over like this, they kind of look like worn appears of fabric, or some other kind of "fabric depth." The mandala design might look even better if the center octagon was filled in similarly instead of the definition being there; Food for thought for another time! The color palette is sort of random; In the name of simplicity, I went with the first thing I thought of: Rainbows are color "woven" together, and/or white light is "woven" from all of the colors. However, in my efforts to shift a little away from a "traditional" rainbow palette and not use too much blue and risk getting a glass-like effect (because I'll be working with glass themes at least one other time later this month, possibly two), I circled back around and this palette is a little more similar to yesterday's than I really wanted. But I've fiddled back and forth with it enough times that I'm really just tired of messing with it and want to settle, lest I keep fiddling until 11 o'clock at night. To be clear, I still like the color palette a lot; The part I'm struggling with is the similarities to yesterday's and the specific ideas I had in mind for this piece as a whole. In a vacuum where those two things don't matter, I actually find the color palette really pretty as a step-off from a more traditional rainbow.

Art feelings are complicated sometimes! 🤷‍♀️

The biggest silver lining though is that, aside from the dumb mistakes I mentioned at the beginning, I didn't encounter as much frustration in trying to put this one together as I did yesterday, which was nice. Hopefully that's a pattern that continues, because I think this coming week is going to be an awfully busy one in a few different ways. 🤞

Only one way to find out, though...! Hope you Sparklers don't come unwoven before then. 🤪

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See the Prompt List

Artwork  © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

[dailyalbumrecs]

Plexure - Plunderphonic

Plexure by Plunderphonic, pseudonym of John Oswald(the man who coined the term plunderphonics, which is a sample based genre), at times sounds like two people on speed going through radio stations, at times has recognizable samples of songs, and all the time is interesting. I think this is an interesting album from both the compositional technique of using only samples, to the sort of cultural aspect of all the different music that is sampled as a representation of music people might recognize. Not something I'd recommend to most people, but a must listen for fans of plunderphonics or derivative genres.

This album is not on Apple Music.

Youtube Link https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfJndz0utgONjUHKJBXpX4Kz0dU1_mCn8&si=KOG-NIzRi51G4dzO

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5kmHY8R6Q3hQc80LzL6aOJ?si=Nxxa3lseTeqNW8-pVdZl3g

[macaron-jester]

18, 19, 25

Thank you for the ask!

18 What’re you excited about for next year? I would say I'm excited to live! It's just wonderful but specifics! I'm excited to take a bunch of classes i enjoy next semester and graduate high school! I'm also going to college for theater, which is something I really enjoy!

19 A memorable meal this year?

I have a pretty bad memory, to be honest! I guess Thanksgiving was memorable because my family is very good at cooking, and it's nice to be with them!

25 Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one

I talked about Reverie earlier, so I think I'll talk about their mother in this one!

I always just call her The Weaver because I can't think of a suitable name, although at a point, it was Plexure! She is a person who can see and manipulate fate. She is rather cruel and apathetic, not above causing great pain and misfortune to those who slight her. She doesn't care for others much other than how they can be of use to her. The Weaver has a connection to spiders in my head, especially black widows and Reverie lambs. She's also the character I drew the mood board for a while back!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The first days of Boss Politics Antitrust

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

"Boss politics" are a feature of corrupt societies. When a society is dominated by self-dealing, corrupt institutions, strongman leaders can seize control by appealing to the public's fury and desperation. Then, the boss can selectively punish corrupt entities that oppose him, and since everyone is corrupt, these will be valid prosecutions.

In other words, it's possible to corruptly enforce the law against the guilty. This is just a matter of enforcement priorities: in a legitimate state, enforcers prioritize the wrongdoers who are harming the public the most. Under boss politics, priority is given to the corrupt entities that challenge the boss's power, without regard to whether these lawbreakers are the worst offenders. Meanwhile, worse wrongdoers walk free, provided that they line up behind the boss.

This is how Xi Jinping prosecuted his purges in the run up to his lifetime appointment as Party Secretary (2012-2015). Xi prosecuted the guilty, but not the most guilty. The public officials who were defenstrated and/or imprisoned during Xi's purges were all corrupt, but they were also the power base of Xi's rivals. Meanwhile, corrupt officials in Xi's own orbit were untouched:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181222163946/https://peterlorentzen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Lorentzen-Lu-Crackdown-Nov-2018-Posted-Version.pdf

Trump is a classic boss politician – that's what people mean when they call him "transactional": he doesn't act out of principle, he acts out of self interest. The people who give him the most get the most back from him. This means that Biden's brightest legacy – militant antitrust enforcement of a type not seen in generations – is now going to become "boss antitrust," where genuine monopolists are attacked under antitrust law, but only if they oppose Trump:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

We're now living through the first days of boss antitrust. Remember all those monopolistic tech billionaires who donated millions of dollars to Trump's inauguration and arranged themselves in a decorative semicircle behind him on the dias? Trump just went to Davos to speak up for them, arguing that EU and other offshore prosecutions of these companies were attacks on "American businesses" and saying he would defend them with the full might of the US government (this is the same government that, under Biden, secured multiple convictions against these same companies for monopolistic conduct):

https://gizmodo.com/trump-returns-big-techs-ass-kissing-at-davos-2000554158

The Federal Trade Commission has lost its Biden-era chair, the extraordinary Lina Khan, who did more in four years than all her predecessors did in the preceding forty years, combined. The new chair is Republican Andrew Ferguson, whose first day on the job was a bloodbath, in which he killed off multiple, significant actions aimed at producing real, material benefits from Americans who are being absolutely screwed by corporations:

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-01-24-executive-action-reaction-day-4/

Ferguson killed off a public comment process on "surveillance pricing," where companies spy on you and then reprice their goods based on their estimation of how desperate you are:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-wealthy/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor

Uber pioneered this when they started increasing the cost of cab rides for riders whose phone batteries were about to die. But other companies took it way further: McDonald's is co-owner of a company called Plexure that sells companies the ability to charge you more for your normal order at the drive-through if you've just been paid:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

But surveillance pricing is even worse for workers than it is for shoppers. Nurses in the USA increasingly work for Uber-like nurse-on-demand apps like Shiftkey, Carerev and Shiftmed. These apps can buy nurses' financial data from the unregulated data-broker industry, and then offer nurses with overdue credit-card bills lower wages, on the grounds that they're so desperate they'll take a paycut:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

Ferguson also killed off a notice-and-comment action on predatory pricing – when companies sell goods below cost in order to destroy competitors, then drive up prices. This is what Uber did, setting $31b of Saudi royal money on fire over 13 years, losing $0.41 on every dollar they brought in. This killed off all the regular taxis, and convinced city governments to abandon public transit investment on the grounds that Uber was cheaper than a bus. Once they'd captured the market, Uber doubled the price of a ride and halved the wages that they paid drivers.

So this is what Ferguson has killed off. In its place, Ferguson has instituted an internal action, aimed at rooting out "DEI" and "wokeness." The agency's top priority right now is running a snitch line where FTC officials can rat each other out for being anti-racist. This isn't just offensive, of course – it's also deeply unserious. Even if you stipulate that "woke" has some meaning (it doesn't, but go with me here), then killing off all the "woke" at the FTC will not make Americans more prosperous, let alone protect them from corporate predators.

In his dissenting statement, FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya didn't mince words:

Andrew Ferguson could have made his first public act as Chairman a motion to study the rising cost of groceries. He could have acted on a pending public petition from a group of wall and ceiling contractors to investigate how lawbreaking contractors can effectively rig contract competitions in the commercial construction industry. He could have moved to investigate a pending public petition from shrimpers from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to investigate potentially false and misleading claims about shrimp imports from India that are farmed with forced labor and shot full of antibiotics…

I have met with corn growers and cattlemen in Iowa. I have met with shrimpers in Biloxi. I have met with pharmacists in Knoxville, grocers in Tulsa, and patients and their doctors in Charleston, West Virginia. I met with the men who build Miami’s million-dollar skyscrapers in 110-degree heat.

Let me tell you what they didn’t talk about: “DEI.”

What they do talk about is how powerful companies are skirting or abusing the law to force farmers, workers, and small businessmen to do what they want, when they want, or else. How the government isn’t doing anything about it. And how they’re going broke because of it

But Chairman Ferguson seems uninterested in the challenges that regular human beings face.

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/bedoya-statement-emergency-motion.pdf

Bedoya is still hanging in there at the FTC; these administrative agency appointments outlast the presidents that made them. It's common for agency heads to step down when there's a changeover – Lina Khan didn't stay – but the commissioners often hang in there. I hope Bedoya stays at the FTC: he's one of the good ones and we're all better off for his presence.

There's one Biden agency head who hasn't left, and surprisingly, it's one of Biden's best appointees: Rohit Chopra, head of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Chopra is the first CFPB head to explore just how much power this new-ish agency has, and has seen his far-reaching, muscular regulations upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court.

Trump's corporate backers hate the CFPB, and Elon Musk really hates the CFBP, and crypto grifters really, really hate the CFPB. Ironically, the demonization of the CFPB seems to be the key to Chopra's enduring tenure. According to David Dayen at The American Prospect, no one in Trumpland wants his job. The Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that presidents can fire CFPB heads, but there's no one who wants to replace Chopra and take their turn in the barrel:

https://prospect.org/economy/2025-01-24-rohit-chopra-still-has-a-job/

Chopra's using his time well: he's brought a flurry of new actions, most lately against the credit bureau giant Transunion. And in the final weeks of the Biden administration, Chopra launched a whole boatload of enforcements, investigations, and other actions against the most predatory companies in America. As Dayen notes, over the past four years, Chopra has forced American rip-off businesses to pay back $6b in stolen loot, and to cough up more than $3.2b in fines.

Replacing Chopra is hard for Trump in part because Trump has imposed a federal hiring freeze. That means that anyone who replaces Chopra has to already be working for the US government, and all the finance grifters are cashing out of the government to go work for giant financial institutions they've been carrying water for while drawing a public salary. Even the people who might take the job can't, because then no one could be hired to do their job – for example, there's a ghoul at the FDIC who'd fit the bill, but if he takes over from Chopra, then the FDIC will have just two members. If the GOP stooge on the FCC quits to take the job, then the Democratic commissioners will have a majority. You love to see it, really.

But – as Dayen points out – they're almost certainly gonna give Chopra the axe eventually. When they do, the CFPB will continue to do some enforcements. It's likely that Ferguson will eventually direct the FTC to do something apart from peering under their beds looking for "woke." When they do take action, they'll probably take action against companies that are wildly, lavishly corrupt. After all, that describes basically all of American big business, a sector that has festered thanks to 40 years of antitrust negligence.

It will be tempting for Trump's opponents to decide that if Trump hates these giant, evil companies, well, then, they must be good. Think of when "progressives" fell in love with the "intelligence community" just because a couple spooks decided they hated Trump. The FBI isn't your friend, folks – this is the agency that tried to blackmail MLK into killing himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_letter

The enemy of your enemy? Still your enemy, provided that they're a big, predatory monopolist. Boss politics is about punishing corruption – selectively. Trump-style antitrust is going to target a ton of bad businesses. That won't make them good.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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/2025/01/24/enforcement-priorities/#enemies-lists

[asteriuspotatoart]

days 6 and 7 of obscurtober are the words "plexure" and "orphrey" meaning woven and highly detailed embroidery, so i drew neo 3 walking past some salmonid prophetic tapestry

[potatoinalovelyhat]

Plexure Necromancer

The act or process of weaving together, or interweaving; that which is woven together

Day 6! Do not let her appearance fool you, she would add you to her friend the moment you give her any chance to do so.

The first list is the Obscutober list made by @mysticsparklewings https://www.tumblr.com/mysticsparklewings/762909713497309184/mysticsobscutober2024?source=share

The second one being the 30 Character Design Challenge made by Parakeetty https://www.furaffinity.net/view/22445508/

[amatsuki]

There’s a company called Plexure in the McDonald’s investment portfolio that advertises that it can change prices for things like drive-thrus in real time, based on surveillance data about customers. If it believes that you’ve just been paid, it will raise the price of the breakfast burrito you get every day.

[yousaytomato]

[1] Scintillate (v.) - my laptop charger every time I plug it in

[2] Littoral (adj.) - Litter-al

[3] Horology (n.) - do y'all remember these guys from doctor who?

[4] Apricate (v.) - Apricots Apricate

[5] Sklent (n.) - It was too difficult to draw Wesley

[6] Plexure (n.) - Shout-out to Mattress Stitch

Days 1-6 of @mysticsparklewings Obscutober. All created using Disney Art Academy (2016) for Nintendo 3DS....for some reason

Definitions here.

[promethea-silk]

Orphic Plexure

@ricard-blythe-ffxiv

[ Artwork by Meg ]

[freshvanillapng]

#Obscutober day 6:

Plexure (n.)

The act or process of weaving together, or interweaving; that which is woven together

——

when Cyaro took Khantos to their Coven and taught him their traditional weaving practices!

(prompt by @mysticsparklewings !)

#obscutober #mysticsobscutober #drawtober #weaving #plexure #ranger #artificer #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #dndart #oc #drawing

[aitoolswhitehattoolbox]

Senior Software Engineer

We’re looking for 3 Senior Software Engineer’s to join the Plexure team in newly created roles! Become part of a global… Apply Now

[t4t4t]

Someone should make a Plexure of music from 2012 to 2022.

ok so i do think the "ai art isnt real art" argument sucks but what about "stealing" art? in the sense of ai being trained on other peoples work and then profiting off of it. for both visual art and written work.

(i know the bigger problem here are the abused workers doing the filtering etc but im interested in this particular problem too)

so first of all i think this argument is kind of silly (im not aiming this at you but at a certain genre of ai critic) because there's no way to distinguish, ontologically or legally, between a generative language model being trained on a certain dataset and a human having artistic influences. that's sort of just how creative production works. it would be really hellish if "having stylistic influences" was like, ethically or legally forbidden lmao. i mean certain forms of art (blackout poetry, collage) can even work explicitly by taking some already existing piece and altering it---but even when that's not happening, human creation and inspiration don't happen in a vacuum or in some kind of transcendent artistic revelation from god above lol.

anyway i do actually think it's fucked for companies to be profiting on the creations of their generative language models, but only in the same way and to the same extent that capitalist production generally is fucked. i do not think the solution here is to further reinforce copyright or monetary ownership of art. and as many people have pointed out, you actually can see a kind of trial run of how this would shake out in the music industry, where laws about sampling have gotten more and more restrictive to protect copyright/ip. it's very easy for massive labels to sue whoever they want, it's hard-to-impossible for smaller artists to fight back even if it's genuinely a case of accidental resemblance, it's legally absurd because like half of rock n roll uses the same few chord progressions anyway, and meanwhile the actual art form has basically been shrunken and restricted because sampling is so threatened and expensive.

[dailyalbumrecs]

Variations IV - John Cage

Variations IV is an album that involves John Cage's music involving chance/randomness and the views of his on music surrounding us everywhere. This starts with a voice explaining the music you will listen to, which I find quite fascinating and probably useful for those who do not know much about John Cage. This music is not particularly conventional, at times can be described as the sound of scrolling through the radio, and reminds me of the album Plexure. This is definitely not for everyone, but those interested in mid 20th century avant garde should check it out.

Apple Music:

Spotify:

[flurrys-creativity]

Plexure

(n.) The act or process of weaving together, or interweaving; that which is woven together

Pairing: Choi Youngjae (Got7) x GN!Reader; Genre: Fluff, Romance, Humour, Established Relationship AU, Slice of life; Rating: sfw, NC-17; Warnings: Nervous Youngjae, description and talk about a sex toy, Bambam is an asshole, an empty threat of killing said man, Coco trying to eat something that’s not for dogs; Wordcount: 1.980;  Prompts: (1) “I wanted to get you the most expensive thing I could find!” -  “And when would I use [insert ridiculous/sexy thing]? (2) “Did you just get me a sex toy for my birthday?” - “You mean that’s not a regular toy?” (3) Person A tries to propose to Person B but they keep misplacing/dropping the ring. Person B finds it by accident.

Synopsis: “It’s a special day after all!”

A/N: Another installment for the Virgo-Project from the @got7writerscollective! 

Youngjae had planned this day for weeks, months even to be more clear. He had lived with you for years now and been together with you even longer - been with you through thick and thin. He had seen you at your worst and obviously you had seen him during his bad times as well.

He just knew he wanted to be with you for the rest of his life. He always had this kind of feeling, vague at first and growing stronger with each second he spent with you. And three months ago it just clicked in his mind. 

You had been sound asleep on the couch, all tangled up within a blanket, hair spread over the pillow in a mussy way, a light snore being heard every now and then and one arm draped over your eyes while the other secured Coco on your stomach.

Both of you looked so peaceful and comfortable and that’s when Youngjae just knew.

Later that day he had called Jaebeom, not being able to hold his own excitement back. “Y/N’s the one!” 

“The one what?”

Youngjae rolled his eyes in mock annoyance. “The one I’m going to marry.”

The other end of the line had gone silent and Youngjae had worried the connection was lost.

“Hyung?”

“Give me a sec.” Jaebeom had breathed out, turning around and walking back into his living room. The guys immediately quietened down and stared at him expectantly. “Youngjae’s gonna get married.”

The room filled up with boisterous shouts and hollers, loud enough for Youngjae to hold his phone a little distant to his ear.

“I still need to propose to her!”

Since that day he has spent every minute of his free time planning the proposal. He planned every little detail, wanting to make this day as special as possible.

Youngjae rushed back to your shared apartment. He needed to be home before you. His glance switched to the bag of gifts on the seat next to him. A smile spread over his face. He couldn’t wait for you to open them and see your reaction.

Thankfully he could convince Bambam to accompany him this morning to get his advice on the right presents.

Once he got home, Youngjae quickly looked around, making sure you weren’t there yet. He then started on making your favourite dinner and dessert as well as baking a cake. After all it was your birthday he chose for the proposal.

While the time passed and Youngjae finished all his preparations, the nervousness multiplied within his body. His hands got sweaty and he started to pace around the room, glancing at the clock every five minutes.

Youngjae knew you wouldn’t be home for another thirty minutes and another thought struck his mind.

He got everything prepared but he never tried the proposal. He glanced once more at the clock before he grabbed the small square box and cleared his throat. “Y/N, we spent so many years together and.. no that doesn’t sound right.”

With a sigh he turned around, shaking his head shortly. “Okay, okay, uhm. Y/N, I really like you and.. no that’s not it either.”

Youngjae ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Maybe,” he glanced around in thought, “maybe I should just drop the ring in a glass of champagne.” He opened the little box and stared at the ring inside it. “Or maybe not. Don’t want it to be swallowed.”

Too deep in thought, Youngjae didn’t notice you came back home until you hugged his body from behind.

He jumped and threw the little box towards the couch out of reflex before he turned around to you with wide eyes. “You’re home!”

You nodded with a wide grin, getting on your toes to place a short kiss on his lips. “I am. Hi.”

“Hey.” Youngjae’s voice cracked awkwardly, his heart beating out of his chest and his mind running a mile a minute. “Are you hungry? I prepared dinner! Come, come! You must be starving.” He hastily grabbed your hands and pulled you along to the kitchen.

Upon entering the kitchen you noticed the small table, neatly set with lit candles and folded table napkins. You raised an eyebrow in question, glancing quickly at Youngjae. “You set the table”, you stated dumbfounded, since you normally just grabbed a plate and walked to the couch, eating there while watching some movies together.

“Yeah! It’s a special day after all.”

“It’s a day like every other?”

Youngjae gasped loudly. “No, no! It’s your birthday! The day you were born! This is super special! Today is the day you’re here.” He ushered you towards a chair, pulling it out for you like a gentleman before he ran to prepare the plates.

“The day I was born is the reason I’m here, not today but go on.” You mumbled while shaking your head with a soft smile. 

You had to admit Youngjae outdid himself with the dinner and the decoration. Though throughout the whole meal he fidgeted nervously with anything in his hand and stared more often than not in the direction of the living room.

“Let me guess”, you mused with a small smile, looking at him over the rim of your wine glass, “you prepared more than this.”

Youngjae froze visibly in front of you, staring back at you like a deer caught in headlights. “How do you know?” He swallowed harshly, afraid the surprise of the proposal was already ruined.

You giggled silently. “I just guessed. You’re looking over to the living room every other minute and I just guessed you might have bought a present too.”

Youngjae sighed in relief before he laughed stiffly. “Yeah, you guessed it. I wanted to give it to you later though.”

“That’s alright.” You shrugged with your shoulders. “We should clean up the kitchen anyway before we leave it and forget about it.”

He nodded and stood up a little too fast, knocking against the table and inevitably against you. The wine glass in your hand spilled slightly over your outfit from the force.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry!” Youngjae fussed over the spilled wine, dabbing his napkin over your lap trying to minimise the damage.

You grabbed his hands gently. “It’s alright, babe. We have a washing machine for that. I’ll just go to the bathroom real quick and change, okay? No harm done.”

With that you stood up and left. Youngjae watched you until you got out of his sight. He then dashed to the living room, nearly throwing the pillows on the couch around carelessly to find the small box again.

He sighed in relief when he lifted the box in front of his face. Youngjae brought the box with him back into the kitchen and hid it underneath a dish towel, since he came to the conclusion a proposal while doing the dishes wasn’t the most romantic act.

Once you came back, Youngjae had already started washing the dishes so you grabbed the towel nearest to you and dried them.

You barely noticed how Youngjae tensed up, seeing you holding the towel in your hands, before his gaze wandered to the small box now completely bare on the sideboard. He gulped nervously and tried to keep you distracted as much as possible.

Thankfully you hadn’t noticed the box and quietly went to the living room, dropping onto the couch happily.

Youngjae grabbed the box and opened it with a sigh. He couldn’t find the right moment and especially not the right words to go along. He wanted for you to be distracted so he could get down on one knee. “Maybe after you unpacked your present,” Youngjae mumbled to himself, looking back up.

He took the box with him, hiding it next to the couch while he grabbed the bag with your present in it. “Happy birthday, love!” A shy grin spread over his lips when he leaned down and kissed you before he handed you the bag.

You bit down on your bottom lip, excitement rising up within you even though you always told him not to spend money for any presents. You pulled a simple square box adorned with a big ribbon out of the bag. “It’s nothing that can break, right?” You asked with big eyes while you held the box next to your ear. Once Youngjae shook his head no you rattled the box slightly, hoping to guess whatever was in it.

“I wanted to get you the most expensive thing I could find!” 

You smiled hearing his words, almost eager to please you with it. You carefully pulled the ribbon and opened the box.

The item stayed hidden underneath thin satin layers and you slowly pushed them away to see what you got.

Confused, you halted your movements. “And when would I use..”, you stared at the u-formed item in the box and pulled it out, “I don’t even know what this is?” You looked quizzically back up to Youngjae before your gaze dropped to the item again.

It felt silken and soft between your fingers. Something slightly flexible and apparently electric because you found a small button to turn it on. Once you pressed it the item started to vibrate in your hands.

“Did you just get me a sex toy for my birthday?”

 “You mean that’s not a regular toy?” Youngjae’s eyes widened in horror. “I know you don’t like getting gifts and I thought this is a dog toy so you had an exclusive dog toy just for Coco and you and..” Youngjae stopped mid sentence, deflating visibly in front of you. “Now that I think about it, that sounds like a terrible idea. I can’t believe Bambam thought it was amazing.”

“Probably because Bambam knew this was a sex toy.” You doubled over laughing, gasping for air soon after.

“I’m going to kill him.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. Let me just google what type of sex toy it is.” You giggled and grabbed your phone.

Youngjae watched you a moment longer while you browsed the internet, thinking this was his chance to propose. He stepped to the side of the couch and kneeled down, keeping his eyes still on you. He then slowly leaned over to grab the little box he hid there, only to come up empty handed.

His head snapped to the side and he stared in horror at the empty area. No box in sight. Thinking he just imagined placing it there, Youngjae got back up, giving you a lame excuse to grab some snacks so he could go back into the kitchen.

Youngjae frantically searched through the kitchen, opening even all drawers, the fridge and the oven but he couldn’t find the box.

Meanwhile you heard Coco gnawing on something and furrowed your brows in suspicion. You leaned over the couch and looked at Coco, eyes slightly narrowed. “What’chu got there?” You stretched yourself and grabbed a small black box from the dog. Carefully you turned it from side to side before you opened it.

Your eyes widened at the small silver band resting inside the smooth velvet fabric. Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes and your heart beat frantically. You took a deep breath and slid the ring on your finger, staring at it in awe.

Youngjae nearly despaired inside the kitchen. He ran his hands through his hair, grabbing strands or fisting whole locks while he tried to remember where he placed the ring.

He didn’t notice you walking up to him until you hugged him from behind.

“Yes, I will.” You breathed, holding your hand with the ring right so Youngjae could see it.

Youngjae turned in your embrace, grabbed your face, pulled you as close as possible and kissed you passionately. All his worries washed away with those three words. “I love you.”

© all rights reserved

[worldiary]

"For example, Plexure boasts that it can predict what day a given customer is getting paid on and use that information to raise prices on all the goods the customer shops for on that day, on the assumption that you're willing to pay more when you've got a healthy bank balance."

Surveillance pricing

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Noted anti-capitalist agitator Adam Smith had it right: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Despite being a raving commie loon, Smith's observation was so undeniably true that regulators, policymakers, and economists couldn't help but acknowledge that it was true. The trustbusting era was defined by this idea: if we let the number of companies in a sector get too small, or if we let one or a few companies get too big, they'll eventually start to rig prices.

What's more, once an industry contracts corporate gigantism, it will become too big to jail, able to outspend and overpower the regulators charged with reining in its cheating. Anyone who believes Smith's self-evident maxim had to accept its conclusion: that companies had to be kept smaller than the state that regulated them. This wasn't about "punishing bigness" – it was the necessary precondition for a functioning market economy.

We kept companies small for the same reason that we limited the height of skyscrapers: not because we opposed height, or failed to appreciate the value of a really good penthouse view – rather, to keep the building from falling over and wrecking all the adjacent buildings and the lives of the people inside them.

Starting in the neoliberal era – Carter, then Reagan – we changed our tune. We liked big business. A business that got big was doing something right. It was perverse to shut down our best companies. Instead, we'd simply ban big companies from rigging prices. This was called the "consumer welfare" theory of antitrust. It was a total failure.

40 years later, nearly every industry is dominated by a handful of companies, and these companies price-gouge us with abandon. Worse, they use their gigantic ripoff winnings to fill war-chests that fund the corruption of democracy, capturing regulators so that they can rip us off even more, while ignoring labor, privacy and environmental law and ducking taxes.

It turns out that keeping gigantic, opaque, complex corporations honest is really hard. They have so many ways to shuffle money around that it's nearly impossible to figure out what they're doing. Digitalization makes things a million times worse, because computers allow businesses to alter their processes so they operate differently for every customer, and even for every interaction.

This is Dieselgate times a billion: VW rigged its cars to detect when they were undergoing emissions testing and switch to a less polluting, more compliant mode. But when they were on the open road, they spewed lethal quantities of toxic gas, killing people by the thousands. Computers don't make corporate leaders more evil, but they let evil corporate leaders execute far more complex and nefarious plans. Digitalization is a corporate moral hazard, making it just too easy and tempting to rig the game.

That's why Toyota, the largest car-maker in the world, just did Dieselgate again, more than a decade later. Digitalization is a temptation no giant company can resist:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wwj1p2wdyo

For forty years, pro-monopoly cheerleaders insisted that we could allow companies to grow to unimaginable scale and still prevent cheating. They passed rules banning companies from explicitly forming agreements to rig prices. About ten seconds later, new middlemen popped up offering "information brokerages" that helped companies rig prices without talking to one another.

Take Agri Stats: the country's hyperconcentrated meatpacking industry pays Agri Stats to "consult on prices." They provide Agri Stats with a list of their prices, and then Agri Stats suggests changes based on its analysis. What does that analysis consist of? Comparing the company's prices to its competitors, who are also Agri Stats customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

In other words, Agri Stats finds the highest price for each product in the sector, then "advises" all the companies with lower prices to raise their prices to the "competitive" level, creating a one-way ratchet that sends the price of food higher and higher.

More and more sectors have an Agri Stats, and digitalization has made this price-gouging system faster, more efficient, and accessible to sectors with less concentration. Landlords, for example, have tapped into Realpage, a "data broker" that the same thing to your rent that Agri Stats does to meat prices. Realpage requires the landlords who sign up for its service to accept its "recommendations" on minimum rents, ensuring that prices only go up:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Writing for The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein lays out the many ways in which these digital intermediaries have supercharged the business of price-rigging:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-05-three-algorithms-in-a-room/

Goldstein identifies a kind of patient zero for this ripoff epidemic: Jeffrey Roper, a former Alaska Air exec who quit to found an illegal airline price-fixing service called ATPCO. ATPCO was investigated by the DOJ in the 1990s, but the enforcers lost their nerve and settled with the company, which agreed to apply some ornamental fig-leafs to its collusion-machine. Even those cosmetic changes were seemingly a bridge too far Roper, who left the US.

But he came back to serve as Realpage's "principal scientist" – the architect of a nationwide scheme to make rental housing vastly more expensive. For Roper, the barrier to low rents was empathy: landlords felt stirrings of shame when they made shelter unaffordable to working people. Roper called these people "idiots" who sentimentality "costs the whole system."

Sticking a rent-gouging computer between landlords and the people whose lives they ruin is a classic "accountability sink," as described in Dan Davies' new book "The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How The World Lost its Mind":

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

It's a form of "empiricism washing": if computers are working in the abstract realm of pure numbers, they're just moving the objective facts of the quantitative realm into the squishy, imperfect qualitative world. Davies' interview on Trashfuture is excellent:

https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/fire-sale-at-the-accountability-store-feat-dan-davies/

To rig prices, an industry has to solve three problems: the problem of coming to an agreement to fix prices (economists call this "the collective action problem"); the problem of coming up with a price; and the problem of actually changing prices from moment to moment. This is the ripoff triangle, and like a triangle, it has many stable configurations.

The more concentrated an industry is, the easier it is to decide to rig prices. But if the industry has the benefit of digitalization, it can swap the flexibility and speed of computers for the low collective action costs from concentration. For example, grocers that switch to e-ink shelf tags can make instantaneous price-changes, meaning that every price change is less consequential – if sales fall off after a price-hike, the company can lower them again at the press of a button. That means they can collude less explicitly but still raise prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

My name for this digital flexibility is "twiddling." Businesses with digital back-ends can alter their "business logic" from second to second, and present different prices, payouts, rankings and other key parts of the deal to every supplier or customer they interact with:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Not only does twiddling make it easier to rip off suppliers, workers and customers, it also makes these crimes harder to detect. Twiddling made Dieselgate possible, and it also underpinned "Greyball," Uber's secret strategy of refusing to send cars to pick up transportation regulators who would then be able to see firsthand how many laws the company was violating:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html

Twiddling is so easy that it has brought price-fixing to smaller companies and less concentrated sectors, though the biggest companies still commit crimes on a scale that put these bit-players to shame. In The Prospect, David Dayen investigates the "personalized pricing" ripoff that has turned every transaction into a potential crime-scene:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-04-one-person-one-price/

"Personalized pricing" is the idea that everything you buy should be priced based on analysis of commercial surveillance data that predicts the maximum amount you are willing to pay.

Proponents of this idea – like Harvard's Pricing Lab with its "Billion Prices Project" – insist that this isn't a way to rip you off. Instead, it lets companies lower prices for people who have less ability to pay:

https://thebillionpricesproject.com/

This kind of weaponized credulity is totally on-brand for the pro-monopoly revolution. It's the same wishful thinking that led regulators to encourage monopolies while insisting that it would be possible to prevent "bad" monopolies from raising prices. And, as with monopolies, "personalized pricing" leads to an overall increase in prices. In econspeak, it is a "transfer of wealth from consumer to the seller."

"Personalized pricing" is one of those cuddly euphemisms that should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. A more apt name for this practice is surveillance pricing, because the "personalization" depends on the vast underground empire of nonconsensual data-harvesting, a gnarly hairball of ad-tech companies, data-brokers, and digital devices with built-in surveillance, from smart speakers to cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Much of this surveillance would be impractical, because no one wants their car, printer, speaker, watch, phone, or insulin-pump to spy on them. The flexibility of digital computers means that users always have the technical ability to change how these gadgets work, so they no longer spy on their users. But an explosion of IP law has made this kind of modification illegal:

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

This is why apps are ground zero for surveillance pricing. The web is an open platform, and web-browsers are legal to modify. The majority of web users have installed ad-blockers that interfere with the surveillance that makes surveillance pricing possible:

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

But apps are a closed platform, and reverse-engineering and modifying an app is a literal felony – several felonies, in fact. An app is just a web-page skinned with enough IP to make it a felony to modify it to protect your consumer, privacy or labor rights:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

(Google is leading a charge to turn the web into the kind of enshittifier's paradise that apps represent, blocking the use of privacy plugins and proposing changes to browser architecture that would allow them to felonize modifying a browser without permission:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

Apps are a twiddler's playground. Not only can they "customize" every interaction you have with them, but they can block you (or researchers seeking to help you) from recording and analyzing the app's activities. Worse: digital transactions are intimate, contained to the palm of your hand. The grocer whose e-ink shelf-tags flicker and reprice their offerings every few seconds can be collectively observed by people who are in the same place and can start a conversation about, say, whether to come back that night a throw a brick through the store's window to express their displeasure. A digital transaction is a lonely thing, atomized and intrinsically shielded from a public response.

That shielding is hugely important. The public hates surveillance pricing. Time and again, through all of American history, there have been massive and consequential revolts against the idea that every price should be different for every buyer. The Interstate Commerce Commission was founded after Grangers rose up against the rail companies' use of "personalized pricing" to gouge farmers.

Companies know this, which is why surveillance pricing happens in secret. Over and over, every day, you are being gouged through surveillance pricing. The sellers you interact with won't tell you about it, so to root out this practice, we have to look at the B2B sales-pitches from the companies that sell twiddling tools.

One of these companies is Plexure, partly owned by McDonald's, which provides the surveillance-pricing back-ends for McD's, Ikea, 7-Eleven, White Castle and others – basically, any time a company gives you a hard-sell to order via its apps rather than its storefronts or its website, you should assume you're getting twiddled, hard.

These companies use the enshittification playbook to trap you into using their apps. First, they offer discounts to customers who order through their apps – then, once the customers are fully committed to shopping via app, they introduce surveillance pricing and start to jack up the prices.

For example, Plexure boasts that it can predict what day a given customer is getting paid on and use that information to raise prices on all the goods the customer shops for on that day, on the assumption that you're willing to pay more when you've got a healthy bank balance.

The surveillance pricing industry represents another reason for everything you use to spy on you – any data your "smart" TV or Nest thermostat or Ring doorbell can steal from you can be readily monetized – just sell it to a surveillance pricing company, which will use it to figure out how to charge you more for everything you buy, from rent to Happy Meals.

But the vast market for surveillance data is also a potential weakness for the industry. Put frankly: the commercial surveillance industry has a lot of enemies. The only thing it has going for it is that so many of these enemies don't know that what's they're really upset about is surveillance.

Some people are upset because they think Facebook made Grampy into a Qanon. Others, because they think Insta gave their kid anorexia. Some think Tiktok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama bin Laden. Some are upset because the cops use Google location data to round up Black Lives Matter protesters, or Jan 6 insurrectionists. Some are angry about deepfake porn. Some are angry because Black people are targeted with ads for overpriced loans or colleges:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/meta_ad_algorithm_discrimination/

And some people are angry because surveillance feeds surveillance pricing. The thing is, whatever else all these people are angry about, they're all angry about surveillance. Are you angry that ad-tech is stealing a 51% share of news revenue? You're actually angry about surveillance. Are you angry that "AI" is being used to automatically reject resumes on racial, age or gender grounds? You're actually angry about surveillance.

There's a very useful analogy here to the history of the ecology movement. As James Boyle has long said, before the term "ecology" came along, there were people who cared about a lot of issues that seemed unconnected. You care about owls, I care about the ozone layer. What's the connection between charismatic nocturnal avians and the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere? The term ecology took a thousand issues and welded them together into one movement.

That's what's on the horizon for privacy. The US hasn't had a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes you were renting:

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

We are desperately overdue for a new consumer privacy law, but every time this comes up, the pro-surveillance coalition defeats the effort. but as people who care about conspiratorialism, kids' mental health, spying by foreign adversaries, phishing and fraud, and surveillance pricing all come together, they will be an unbeatable coalition:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Meanwhile, the US government is actually starting to take on these ripoff artists. The FTC is working to shut down data-brokers:

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

The FBI is raiding landlords to build a case against Frontpage and other rent price-fixers:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Agri Stats is facing a DoJ lawsuit:

https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/market-news/agri-stats-loses-motions-to-transfer-dismiss-in-doj-antitrust-case

Not every federal agency has gotten the message, though. Trump's Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell – whom Biden kept on the job – has been hiking interest rates in a bid to reduce our purchasing power by making millions of Americans poorer and/or unemployed. He's doing this to fight inflation, on the theory that inflation is being cause by us being too well-off, and therefore trying to buy more goods than are for sale.

But of course, interest rates are inflationary: when interest rates go up, it gets more expensive to pay your credit card bills, lease your car, and pay a mortgage. And where we see the price of goods shooting up, there's abundant evidence that this is the result of greedflation – companies jacking up their prices and blaming inflation. Interest rate hawks say that greedflation is impossible: if one company raises its prices, its competitors will swoop in and steal their customers with lower prices.

Maybe they would do that – if they didn't have a toolbox full of algorithmic twiddling options and a deep trove of surveillance data that let them all raise prices together:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-06-05-time-for-fed-to-meet-ftc/

Someone needs to read some Adam Smith to Chairman Powell: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

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

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

[lilyswrittenworks]

MEDIEVIL || DÉPAYSEMENT:  CHAPTER SIX

|| Plexure ||

(noun.) the act or process of weaving together, or interweaving; that which is woven together.

•·················•·················•

There was a pleasant humming in the background that was accompanied by the sound of soft cutting and fabric being torn off. Laura had been busying herself by crafting a skirt for herself, using the spare tweed she had tucked away in a drawer and decided to make use of it.

The fabric she was weaving had a rustic feel to it with its brown, red, and yellow hues adorning the intricate piece in her grasp. Her fingers would trace absentmindedly at the fabric gently, admiring its beauty in all its glory, almost getting sidetracked for ogling at the tweed. This particular fabric is by far one of her favorite ones to work with particularly because of its small squares and vertical lines, mostly because she is obsessed with the style. It made her swoon at the thought of wearing the tweed as a walking skirt, alas, the thick material hindered her from wearing it during the summer.

Winter will come eventually…

She then began to hand stitch the seams of the walking skirt, threading the needle and yarn into the fabric with diligence. Being that her center of attention was on her hand stitching the seams that she hadn’t heard the soft footfalls approaching her. She was nearing the end of her threading when she felt someone gently tap the corner of her sewing machine table.

Her fingers paused in the midst of inserting the needle into the fabric and moved her focus to the person standing next to her. It was her friend Daniel. She hadn’t noticed the plate of assorted sweets he was holding until he settled it on the table in front of her.

“Thank you Daniel. Let me finish the last stitching real quick.” Laura did so with ease and used a thread clipper to cut off the remaining loose thread.

“You’ve been working on this since the wee hours of the night. Your muscles must be stiff from all those hand stitches.” He watches as she neatly ties off the thread and then clipping the excess off before stretching her stiff muscles with a satisfying ‘pop’.

“You're not wrong,” Laura faced him with a sheepish smile. “But I got to finish the walking skirt! I’ve been itching to use this lovely patterned tweed for months and I’m happy with the results. Now if only winter would show up…”

Daniel shook his head in amusement, moving away from the sewing table to look out the bedroom window. Laura had begun to munch on a biscuit almost hungrily after not eating for quite awhile, sweets aren’t a good meal for lunch but it was better than eating nothing. While eating the biscuit her eyes wandered towards Daniel, he was staring out the window with both his hands shoved inside the pockets of his dress pants.

It was hard to believe that Daniel has been living with her for almost two months. She didn’t think twice to help him when he told her that he had been homeless all this time. No matter how much he protested you were adamant on getting him back on his feet, offering him to stay in the spare guest room that was just down the hall to the left from her bedroom and even providing him with a much needed set of garments those of which she is in the process of making it for him.

She remembered going up to him and asking what his measurements were and he couldn’t give her an honest answer and the conversation would deviate into something mildly obscure. It wasn’t until she pulled out her measuring tape that Dan freaked out as she moved closer. Laura didn’t really understand why he was causing such a fuss and assured him that she was going to take his measurements without him needing to remove his clothing. This seemed to calm him down, if only a little, it was better than having him run around the room to avoid the measuring tape in her hand.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Laura blinked out of her haze to notice Daniel was facing her, a smile gracing her lips. “I see that you're using the dress pants I made for you, it suits you well.”

He bashfully averts his gaze, finding the window much more pleasing to look at all of the sudden. With the amount of effort she put into a piece of clothing it truly showed how good-natured she is despite the hassle she had to go through in taking his measurements.

“It isn’t too constricting isn’t it?”

Daniel sputtered, putting up his hands in front of him in defense. “N-o, no! It’s fine— no, perfect! It fits perfectly!”

She gives him a look for his odd outburst and then laughs to herself. “Ok as long as it fits I won’t be adjusting it anytime soon.” Laura stands up, taking the empty plate in her hands. “I’ll go ahead and prepare a proper lunch, do you want some extra for later, Daniel?”

“Later, yes. Thank you.” Laura takes her leave, unaware of Daniel’s gaze as she disappears around the corner.

His gaze lingered at the doorway before it drifted down at his gloved hand, aware of what he hid underneath the brown leather. Daniel wanted so badly to tell her the truth of what he really was and to hell with the constant lies he keeps telling her about himself about his supposed ‘deformity’. But the rational side of him held him back, and reminded him that revealing himself to her would only cause more harm than good. Scaring her off is a scenario that he wanted to avoid at all cost.

A sudden worry washes over him. How long will his facade last? It has to, right?

He pulled himself out of the intrusive thoughts and allowed his legs to carry him out of the bedroom and down the stairs to assist Laura in the kitchen.

(988 words in total)

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