#political competition

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Big Tech disrupted disruption

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/2024/02/08/permanent-overlords/#republicans-want-to-defund-the-police

Before "disruption" turned into a punchline, it was a genuinely exciting idea. Using technology, we could connect people to one another and allow them to collaborate, share, and cooperate to make great things happen.

It's easy (and valid) to dismiss the "disruption" of Uber, which "disrupted" taxis and transit by losing $31b worth of Saudi royal money in a bid to collapse the world's rival transportation system, while quietly promising its investors that it would someday have pricing power as a monopoly, and would attain profit through price-gouging and wage-theft.

Uber's disruption story was wreathed in bullshit: lies about the "independence" of its drivers, about the imminence of self-driving taxis, about the impact that replacing buses and subways with millions of circling, empty cars would have on traffic congestion. There were and are plenty of problems with traditional taxis and transit, but Uber magnified these problems, under cover of "disrupting" them away.

But there are other feats of high-tech disruption that were and are genuinely transformative – Wikipedia, GNU/Linux, RSS, and more. These disruptive technologies altered the balance of power between powerful institutions and the businesses, communities and individuals they dominated, in ways that have proven both beneficial and durable.

When we speak of commercial disruption today, we usually mean a tech company disrupting a non-tech company. Tinder disrupts singles bars. Netflix disrupts Blockbuster. Airbnb disrupts Marriott.

But the history of "disruption" features far more examples of tech companies disrupting other tech companies: DEC disrupts IBM. Netscape disrupts Microsoft. Google disrupts Yahoo. Nokia disrupts Kodak, sure – but then Apple disrupts Nokia. It's only natural that the businesses most vulnerable to digital disruption are other digital businesses.

And yet…disruption is nowhere to be seen when it comes to the tech sector itself. Five giant companies have been running the show for more than a decade. A couple of these companies (Apple, Microsoft) are Gen-Xers, having been born in the 70s, then there's a couple of Millennials (Amazon, Google), and that one Gen-Z kid (Facebook). Big Tech shows no sign of being disrupted, despite the continuous enshittification of their core products and services. How can this be? Has Big Tech disrupted disruption itself?

That's the contention of "Coopting Disruption," a new paper from two law profs: Mark Lemley (Stanford) and Matthew Wansley (Yeshiva U):

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4713845

The paper opens with a review of the literature on disruption. Big companies have some major advantages: they've got people and infrastructure they can leverage to bring new products to market more cheaply than startups. They've got existing relationships with suppliers, distributors and customers. People trust them.

Diversified, monopolistic companies are also able to capture "involuntary spillovers": when Google spends money on AI for image recognition, it can improve Google Photos, YouTube, Android, Search, Maps and many other products. A startup with just one product can't capitalize on these spillovers in the same way, so it doesn't have the same incentives to spend big on R&D.

Finally, big companies have access to cheap money. They get better credit terms from lenders, they can float bonds, they can tap the public markets, or just spend their own profits on R&D. They can also afford to take a long view, because they're not tied to VCs whose funds turn over every 5-10 years. Big companies get cheap money, play a long game, pay less to innovate and get more out of innovation.

But those advantages are swamped by the disadvantages of incumbency, all the various curses of bigness. Take Arrow's "replacement effect": new companies that compete with incumbents drive down the incumbents' prices and tempt their customers away. But an incumbent that buys a disruptive new company can just shut it down, and whittle down its ideas to "sustaining innovation" (small improvements to existing products), killing "disruptive innovation" (major changes that make the existing products obsolete).

Arrow's Replacement Effect also comes into play before a new product even exists. An incumbent that allows a rival to do R&D that would eventually disrupt its product is at risk; but if the incumbent buys this pre-product, R&D-heavy startup, it can turn the research to sustaining innovation and defund any disruptive innovation.

Arrow asks us to look at the innovation question from the point of view of the company as a whole. Clayton Christensen's "Innovator's Dilemma" looks at the motivations of individual decision-makers in large, successful companies. These individuals don't want to disrupt their own business, because that will render some part of their own company obsolete (perhaps their own division!). They also don't want to radically change their customers' businesses, because those customers would also face negative effects from disruption.

A startup, by contrast, has no existing successful divisions and no giant customers to safeguard. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain from disruption. Where a large company has no way for individual employees to initiate major changes in corporate strategy, a startup has fewer hops between employees and management. What's more, a startup that rewards an employee's good idea with a stock-grant ties that employee's future finances to the outcome of that idea – while a giant corporation's stock bonuses are only incidentally tied to the ideas of any individual worker.

Big companies are where good ideas go to die. If a big company passes on its employees' cool, disruptive ideas, that's the end of the story for that idea. But even if 100 VCs pass on a startup's cool idea and only one VC funds it, the startup still gets to pursue that idea. In startup land, a good idea gets lots of chances – in a big company, it only gets one.

Given how innately disruptable tech companies are, given how hard it is for big companies to innovate, and given how little innovation we've gotten from Big Tech, how is it that the tech giants haven't been disrupted?

The authors propose a four-step program for the would-be Tech Baron hoping to defend their turf from disruption.

First, gather information about startups that might develop disruptive technologies and steer them away from competing with you, by investing in them or partnering with them.

Second, cut off any would-be competitor's supply of resources they need to develop a disruptive product that challenges your own.

Third, convince the government to pass regulations that big, established companies can comply with but that are business-killing challenges for small competitors.

Finally, buy up any company that resists your steering, succeeds despite your resource war, and escapes the compliance moats of regulation that favors incumbents.

Then: kill those companies.

The authors proceed to show that all four tactics are in play today. Big Tech companies operate their own VC funds, which means they get a look at every promising company in the field, even if they don't want to invest in them. Big Tech companies are also awash in money and their "rival" VCs know it, and so financial VCs and Big Tech collude to fund potential disruptors and then sell them to Big Tech companies as "aqui-hires" that see the disruption neutralized.

On resources, the authors focus on data, and how companies like Facebook have explicit policies of only permitting companies they don't see as potential disruptors to access Facebook data. They reproduce internal Facebook strategy memos that divide potential platform users into "existing competitors, possible future competitors, [or] developers that we have alignment with on business models." These categories allow Facebook to decide which companies are capable of developing disruptive products and which ones aren't. For example, Amazon – which doesn't compete with Facebook – is allowed to access FB data to target shoppers. But Messageme, a startup, was cut off from Facebook as soon as management perceived them as a future rival. Ironically – but unsurprisingly – Facebook spins these policies as pro-privacy, not anti-competitive.

These data policies cast a long shadow. They don't just block existing companies from accessing the data they need to pursue disruptive offerings – they also "send a message" to would-be founders and investors, letting them know that if they try to disrupt a tech giant, they will have their market oxygen cut off before they can draw breath. The only way to build a product that challenges Facebook is as Facebook's partner, under Facebook's direction, with Facebook's veto.

Next, regulation. Starting in 2019, Facebook started publishing full-page newspaper ads calling for regulation. Someone ghost-wrote a Washington Post op-ed under Zuckerberg's byline, arguing the case for more tech regulation. Google, Apple, OpenAI other tech giants have all (selectively) lobbied in favor of many regulations. These rules covered a lot of ground, but they all share a characteristic: complying with them requires huge amounts of money – money that giant tech companies can spare, but potential disruptors lack.

Finally, there's predatory acquisitions. Mark Zuckerberg, working without the benefit of a ghost writer (or in-house counsel to review his statements for actionable intent) has repeatedly confessed to buying companies like Instagram to ensure that they never grow to be competitors. As he told one colleague, "I remember your internal post about how Instagram was our threat and not Google+. You were basically right. The thing about startups though is you can often acquire them.”

All the tech giants are acquisition factories. Every successful Google product, almost without exception, is a product they bought from someone else. By contrast, Google's own internal products typically crash and burn, from G+ to Reader to Google Videos. Apple, meanwhile, buys 90 companies per year – Tim Apple brings home a new company for his shareholders more often than you bring home a bag of groceries for your family. All the Big Tech companies' AI offerings are acquisitions, and Apple has bought more AI companies than any of them.

Big Tech claims to be innovating, but it's really just operationalizing. Any company that threatens to disrupt a tech giant is bought, its products stripped of any really innovative features, and the residue is added to existing products as a "sustaining innovation" – a dot-release feature that has all the innovative disruption of rounding the corners on a new mobile phone.

The authors present three case-studies of tech companies using this four-point strategy to forestall disruption in AI, VR and self-driving cars. I'm not excited about any of these three categories, but it's clear that the tech giants are worried about them, and the authors make a devastating case for these disruptions being disrupted by Big Tech.

What do to about it? If we like (some) disruption, and if Big Tech is enshittifying at speed without facing dethroning-by-disruption, how do we get the dynamism and innovation that gave us the best of tech?

The authors make four suggestions.

First, revive the authorities under existing antitrust law to ban executives from Big Tech companies from serving on the boards of startups. More broadly, kill interlocking boards altogether. Remember, these powers already exist in the lawbooks, so accomplishing this goal means a change in enforcement priorities, not a new act of Congress or rulemaking. What's more, interlocking boards between competing companies are illegal per se, meaning there's no expensive, difficult fact-finding needed to demonstrate that two companies are breaking the law by sharing directors.

Next: create a nondiscrimination policy that requires the largest tech companies that share data with some unaffiliated companies to offer data on the same terms to other companies, except when they are direct competitors. They argue that this rule will keep tech giants from choking off disruptive technologies that make them obsolete (rather than competing with them).

On the subject of regulation and compliance moats, they have less concrete advice. They counsel lawmakers to greet tech giants' demands to be regulated with suspicion, to proceed with caution when they do regulate, and to shape regulation so that it doesn't limit market entry, by keeping in mind the disproportionate burdens regulations put on established giants and small new companies. This is all good advice, but it's more a set of principles than any kind of specific practice, test or procedure.

Finally, they call for increased scrutiny of mergers, including mergers between very large companies and small startups. They argue that existing law (Sec 2 of the Sherman Act and Sec 7 of the Clayton Act) both empower enforcers to block these acquisitions. They admit that the case-law on this is poor, but that just means that enforcers need to start making new case-law.

I like all of these suggestions! We're certainly enjoying a more activist set of regulators, who are more interested in Big Tech, than we've seen in generations.

But they are grossly under-resourced even without giving them additional duties. As Matt Stoller points out, "the DOJ's Antitrust Division has fewer people enforcing anti-monopoly laws in a $24 trillion economy than the Smithsonian Museum has security guards."

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/congressional-republicans-to-defund

What's more, Republicans are trying to slash their budgets even further. The American conservative movement has finally located a police force they're eager to defund: the corporate police who defend us all from predatory monopolies.

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

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

[tangledinink]

For the beautiful twins, a gift of hope

@tmntaucompetition

[thefeastandthefast]

I'm OBSESSED with the terrifying Princess Wanning and want ALL the backstory about her time as a hostage and everything she did to survive (and possibly even thrive?) in such a situation. Please, drama, give it to me! (Do I feel fic urges coming on?)

She's over-the-top and openly, gleefully cruel and sadistic in a way that female villains don't often get to be, but the actress makes her chillingly believable. The actress Li Meng oscillates so naturally between all the minute shades of her many malevolent moods and is clearly having a ball playing her. Li Meng was great in The Bad Kids and now I know I will definitely be seeking out more of her work. Suggesting two men murder each other in front of her as a job interview is exactly the kind of unhinged psychotic creativity that I appreciate about Wanning.

[phoenixcatch7]

Open up

Based on this wonderful art of @puppetmaster13u for the dollhouse au!

It had been a long day, and was destined to be even longer.

The original plan had been bad enough; the league had a media conference planned for three o'clock, one that involved foreign presence and thus required pristine presentation.

Then, as all perfectly good plans that could have been left alone by the universe did, it was derailed by a villain attack or several. He said several because it seemed almost a dozen separate villains had individually had the bright idea of sabotaging the well publicised event. Though they'd failed, the accidental collaboration had done what each alone could not, and now the league was dragging themselves to base to hurriedly patch up the thankfully minor wounds and try and rush to meet the deadline.

Each league member on the list had a formal version of their usual super suit - flash's main change had been a bowtie before it met almost unanimous disapproval, and on the other end of the effort spectrum was Bruce. Not of his own will - he quite envied Flash's staunch faith in the single black bowtie - but he not only had been raised for the fast and critical world of the upper class, but was currently in a metal plated marionette held together by glue and screws and wires, which meant changing attire was more of a debacle than it would ordinarily be.

He flipped open the toolkit with the best approximation of a sigh the doll body could manage. The chest inflated and deflated, which was in fact a rather worrying sign because it wasn't supposed to be able to do that. He grabbed a screwdriver and a pit of tar glue and approached the mirror. He'd just have to go into the globally broadcast meeting stinking of sulphur... Perhaps he could borrow perfume from one of the girls, cologne combined dreadfully.

The chest cavity opened with little tugging, and he held one side in place as he attacked the bent hinges. An odd feeling, for sure. He took a hammer to the dent, imagining it was the penguin's face and praying Clark didn't decide now was the time to approach him on his self soothing metalworking hobby. He'd been entrusted with the override code for the door and Bruce was now quietly regretting that.

The chest cavity doors creaked back into place, which enabled him to finally pull out the costume change for the evening and dump it on the side.

Now for the leg, having been crushed under a tank penguin had smuggled into Gotham. It now bent the wrong way, and hiding it under his cloak had been a pain, but at least it hadn't come off -

There it went. Batman watched, almost despondent, as it toppled free of his body and crashed to the ground. The unhappy static that raced up his spine at the sight was expected - he'd be paying for the lack of care for the Patriarch Doll in nightmares tonight.

Joy.

He tipped into the nearby stool and kicked the lost limb closer with his remaining foot, squinting. Just a cracked screw and torn spring at the knee, thank goodness. He'd have it fully attached again within the hour.

But he was pretty sure he couldn't bend that far over without his jaw falling off, so face it was.

Hood off, wires unlaced under the chin, hidden screws loosened. The gas mask came off. The velcro on top of his head took good old fashioned yanking, but eventually peeled off with reluctant crackling, revealing the unpainted grey metal beneath.

As expected, his jaw was almost entirely loose, unable to close now without the structure of the mask. The nutcracker mouth in the lower jaw fell to tap against his throat, leaving either side of the actual lower jaw to hang in the air. Experimentally, he opened and closed his mouth, and watched all three parts swing and clink like a robot body horror wind-chime.

This was going to need a finer touch, and so he stripped off his gloves to access the sharp points of his talons - capped while with the league to keep the prick of steel rending claws to a mere suggestion.

He felt bared, now, all his top layer removed and abandoned, the door to his room at his back. He feels the paranoia to double check the lock, reassures himself that even if he'd somehow forgotten in his haste to hide away none of the members were mad enough to try and get in. Outside Superman, of course, but he always knocked.

Still, he hurried through repairs, running diagnostics in the back of his mind as he daubed glue into the cracks and set about restructuring his own jaw. Ears swivelled. Neck rolled. Glider snaps curled.

The jaw pieces were setting nicely when there was a noise at the door, and batman whipped around, cloak flaring behind him. The pliers dropped from suddenly weak fingers.

Captain marvel stood in the doorway, eyes wide as he took in the room, face pale as he saw Batman propped up in middle, bare of his many obfuscating layers. Black tar speckled his lap, wires hung free like veins, blank eyes glowed, his jaw gaping, skinless. Glinting claws and spikes in full view, a limb discarded on the floor like garbage. His chest a dark hole, void of organs, of machinery, of anything that could make him run. A decades old terror gripped his heart.

HE SAW!

Both froze. Time stretched interminably.

The captains chest heaved for a scream, and batman was moving before he knew it, grabbing his fallen leg and lunging.

Captain marvel fell with a crack. Batman caught himself on the door. Five seconds before short term memory entered long term, had he reacted in time?

Hm.

He considered the body of the champion of magic laid in front of him, idly rebalancing the eternal tally graph of potential energies the dolls might run on in the back of his head and as always coming up none the wiser. This was a very inconvenient place for a body. Perhaps he could nudge marvel into the hallway to wake up. He glanced up and down the empty corridor, staying out of view of the camera.

Maybe he had overreacted slightly.

Bonus:

Billy and Green Lantern sat in the monitor room, ostensibly on duty but really checking out the watchtower camera feeds of the day before. Lantern was pointing at the screen.

"Here," he said, with a glee Billy didn't honestly appreciate. "Look at that. You go down like a sack of bricks and then -" he clicked forward two frames, "- this silver hand thing appears on the door frame. Look at that, that's a proper horror movie hand curl. The claws! Just missing the glint of a blood covered axe appearing from the shadows."

Billy shuddered, but couldn't help moving closer.

"What do you think it was? Can't have been batman, right?"

"You were there, you tell me." Lantern patted him on the shoulder before he could retort. "I mean, doesn't look much like him. Doesn't really have claws and his are black anyway. Pretty sure his gloves are sewn into his skin at this point."

"I didn't need that mental image," Billy said, because he really didn't.

"Could be another Robin variant? Like that black bat thing?"

"Dunno. I mean, unlikely. Maybe it was batman. Maybe he can shapeshift a little."

"We've had that on the list of possible powers for ages, still nothing firm one way or the other."

"It probably is batman -"

"But the claws -"

They trailed off.

"We'll just add it to the list. I'll save the file, hang on. We can talk about it at the do next week - you're coming right?"

"Yeah, but I've got, uh... A diplomacy thing with the yetis at nine, so I'll have to bail then."

"You always have the weirdest personal missions. Hey, maybe you can ask them about batman, pffft. Maybe he's one of them."

[kitausuret]

There's something interesting I've realized about the concept of a "living wage" in the US that has only really occurred to me since I got a better job that.. you know, pays a living wage. (Just for the sake of what I mean, I earn over $20 USD/hr, I work full time, and I live in Nebraska. My partner is the same as far as wages.)

This fall, my partner and I got our first house. It's 3 bedrooms, 2 bath, small but finished basement. It took a lot of negotiation and stress but with the help of an A+ realtor and loan expert, we got it. Yay!

Now, we were used to paying rent, but paying a mortgage was going to be almost double. This was fine, we could afford it. While we recover financially from some things we had to do (replace a deck, fix a cracked pipe, you know the usual) we have been a little more careful about our spending. Even with that though, we're still able to get groceries and eat at a restaurant once a week and buy holiday gifts for our friends and families. It might be a couple years until we can shell out for a little vacation, but that's okay.

My point here though is that... this is what it should be like for everyone. A two-income household should be able to get a decent little house and have a few fun luxuries and still have enough in savings if you need an emergency car or home repair or veterinarian bill or the like. A living wage needs to be more than just a roof over your head and food on your table. You should be able to invest in things that make you happy (like a nice bike or video game console) and things that make life easier (like a toaster oven or snowblower).

We both work desk jobs. It's stressful but we can work from home and that also saves money. But for everyone in every kind of job, or even if you can't work, you should still be able to live. And that's why it's important to support higher wages, better disability support, and universal basic income. Everyone deserves the opportunity to be happy and feel safe and secure.

So when you see local petitions out to raise the minimum wage, when you see workers striking for an income they can actually live on, and when you see measures that will help people on the ballot, remember that when you support them, things DO change for the better.

[shinobicyrus]

Hey, yanno how Climate Change is a real thing that is tangibly, at this moment, affecting our world?

Well it turns out, the wealthy and their investment firms have been seeing the mounting evidence that oil companies have had for decades and are slowly starting to think more long-term about their portfolios in the face of rising sea levels, more extreme weather, and the myriad of ways climate crises are affecting...well. Everything. Maybe this means they invest more into sustainability, green energy, building more resilient infrastructure, or carbon offsets. Some of it, of course, is simple corporate greenwashing, but there are those that are taking this trend and packaging it into something called ESG (Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance).

Now some people would say this is predictable, even sensible. Just the good ol’ Free Market(tm) rationally responding to market forces and a changing world.

But those people would be fools! Insidious fools! For conservative sorcerers have come out with a new cursed phrase to explain this new market trend: Woke Investing.

What makes this investing “woke?” Well, much like how conservatives normally flounder when trying to define a word they stole from black people, “Woke Investing” essentially just means any kind of capital investment that they, the fossil fuel billionaire class and their sycophants, don’t personally profit from.

One of these aforementioned sycophants is Andy Puzder, conservative commentator, fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and former fast-food CEO. He calls this kind of so-called woke investing “socialism in sheep’s clothing,” further explaining in leaked audio of a closed-door meeting:

“My father's generation's challenge was the Nazis, who, by the way, were, of course, very proud socialists[citation fucking needed]. The challenge of my generation was the communists, who were, of course, very committed socialists. The challenge of your generation is ESG investing, and it's more insidious than communism or the Nazis.”(source)

You heard it here first, folks. Not investing as much in fossil fuels is more insidious than the Third Fucking Reich.

As usual, the Heritage Foundation is putting their petro-chemical donor’s money where their mouth is. Bills are being proposed to blacklist banks that don’t invest in key state industries, such as West Virginia coal or Texas oil. Fourteen states have already passed bills to restrict ESG-type investing, with Florida Governor Ron “Bullies Kids for Wearing Masks” Desantis leading the charge.

In other words, Climate Denial has reached such a point that so-called Free Market Conservatives who claim to hate big government are trying to make it illegal for banks, investment firms, and financial institutions to make any financial decisions that acknowledges Climate Change is real.

[andy-888]

Whenever someone tells Edwin he made his whole personality the fact that he spent 70 years in hell either in the show or fanfics I find it so funny bc If I were him id do the same like imagine someone telling you "There's something wrong with you" Well... YES I WAS TORTURED FOR 70 YEARS. IN HELL.

Shout out to my bestie Dean Winchester who took the route of networking in hell which was surprisingly worse

[artemis-moon23]

Trevor Herbert.

A hunter

A murderer

A vamp killer

But most of all!

A POLITICIAN

(he slays the competition, hunter style)

[total-drama-brainrot]

father ophelia. i need ur multi paragraph analysis on how camning date would happen. who would ask who out

Camning is such a weird pair to consider as an actual couple instead of two mutually pining idiots because I can't in good faith say that either of them would ever admit to having feelings for the other.

Don't get me wrong, Cameron isn't the type to suppress or deny his feeings or anything - in fact he'd be ecstatic at the prospect of having a crush on someone, because it's yet another wordly experience he's been deprived of his whole life that he's living for the first time. And that's exactly the issue; Cameron has no idea how to go about expressing these things, save for whatever romance based literature/tv shows he was exposed to growing up and, knowing Cameron, he'd be more than aware that they doesn't exactly portray a realistic perspective on real-life relationships. So he's back to square one when it comes to knowledge on how to deal with his feelings.

Which would mean he'd be the type to go completely non-verbal in front of Lightning, or otherwise be a stuttering mess. A pathetic puddle of a boy who has no idea how to deal with these new, weird feelings save for whispering "oh no he's hot" to himself.

On the other hand, Lightning is extremely prideful. Extremely prideful. He'd be completely in denial about having a crush on Cameron of all people because he's the antithesis of everything Lightning holds in high regard; Cameron isn't athletic or strong, he's not outwardly headstrong or competitive (at first glance, though Cameron does have a spine hidden somewhere in that red hoodie) and Lightning wouldn't see Cameron as someone who could relate to him in any way. Keep in mind, Lightning's a bit of an egotist, so he'd be under the assumption that his ideal partner would be a reflection of himself.

And Lightning isn't very bright, despite his namesake, so he wouldn't realise that's exactly why he likes Cameron so much. He's impressed by Cameron's fountain of knowledge and keen intellect. He's astounded by how Cameron can use his wit and his determination to win challenges without having to brute forcing his way to victory. He thinks Cameron is adorable and experiences cuteness aggression every time they lock eyes. So on so forth.

So with Cameron's Cameronness and Lightning's staunch denial, there's only one way these two would ever get together.

Lightning accidentally confesses.

Be it through an insult gone wrong during the competition, or maybe a freudian slip in a conversation post-RotI, or even him just plain denying any feelings for Cameron unprompted and inadvertantly outing himself as a Cameron Liker through his defensiveness. Either way, Cameron hears this confirmation of returned feelings and all of the knowledge he's accrued from his mother's books/shows comes in swinging - he asks Lightning to have dinner with him. And surprisingly, Lightning accepts.

...Because it's free food, not because he likes the wimp. That's his excuse.

And the two hit it off. Cameron spends the whole first date sweating profusely but miraculously not putting his foot in his mouth. Though he does oftentimes get too technical and booksmart for Lightning to understand what he's saying, but Lightning nods along politely anyway because he finds the enthusiasm on Cameron's face endearing.

In turn, Lightning's initial jibing insults (which, subconciously, he's only really using to keep up appearences) peter off into genuine compliments as he realises that wow, he actually really enjoys spending time with Cameron, and Cameron is really smart but not condecending in the slightest when he asks for elaboration on things he doesn't understand, and Cameron's got a lot of interesting thoughts that he's never considered, and...

Lightning realises that he might be very, very gay for Cameron.

In turn, Cameron's almost vibrating with excitement because he's talking to Lightning, and Lightning is talking back, and there's this natural chemistry between them that even he in all of his inexperience can feel sparking in the air now that Lightning's walls of superiority have finally crumbled somewhat. He's on a date with the boy he likes and it's going really well.

(None of his research could've prepared him for the actual experience of a first date - and oddly enough, Cameron is thankful that he didn't have any preconceived expectations for the night.)

The night goes well, they eat food at some fancy restaurant that Cameron pays for with his winnings, and as they go to leave Lightning - because he's not one to be outshone in the competitive context of being a "good date haver" - gives Cameron a peck at the corner of his mouth. It's brief, a ghost of an action really, but it's enough to have Cameron visibly light up as he returns the favour.

-

At some point after they've been going on these dates for a while (Lightning more often than not taking Cameron to various sports games "for the experience", and Cameron indulging Lightning by taking him on hikes whilst he studies the wildlife they come across, ect ect) they breach the topic of being boyfriends in an awkward but sweet conversation that Lightning spends the next few months poking fun at Cameron for.

[lbulldesigns]

Zaun (AITAH Arcane AU Mood board)

The City of Iron and Glass, and revitalisation

Seventy years ago, Zaun, still going by the moniker of the Undercity, was in a constant state of desperation.

The mining colony turned city, was no stranger to hardships. From unsafe mining conditions to unsafe working conditions within the factories jammed packed within the city, to unsafe living conditions due to poor maintenance to residental structure and over pollution brought on my the factories and the toxic gases from the deep mines being compressed within the underground city.

All of this was due to the conscious negligence of Piltover. Whose one and only concern was image and wealth. To them Zaun was an eyesore but they refused to acknowledge that this was due to them.

They preferred the image of being righteous and a city of academics and kept their well-shoed foot to Zaun's throat by unleashing their Enforcers upon them who dealt their "justice" in brutal fashion.

This continuous abuse and oppression had to come to an abrupt end, however.

In 1954 Piltover and its Enforcers had stepped on Zaun and Janna's (Goddess of the Wind) final nerve.

When during an arrest of a factory worker voicing his outrage for being unfairly fired, an officer took liberation to bludgeon a 12-year-old girl who had stepped in to beg her father's release before shooting dead the distraught father.

In this moment something snapped within the people witnessing the scene and every Zaun citizen present attacked the Enforcers without conern for their own lives. This attack would go on to inspire more within the city to take up arms and riots broke out everywhere, with the intention to put as many Enforcers down.

Janna tried to protect as many innocent lives caught in the crossfire as she could, but the death toll was climbing with her people dying in droves.

When Piltover took to trying to blow the bridges and starve the residents in Zaun, Janna had reached her limit and decided something more drastic had to be done.

For a month, the Goddess of Wisdom and Harmony became an unyielding and unrelenting, furious storm.

She took the fight straight to Piltover and wrecked havoc upon the city. Gleaming, unblemished structures that reached to the sky came crumbling down as if they were sandcastles within the oceans reach.

She dispersed her followers to ransack the city of the progress of food, clean water, and medicine. And kept the Enforcers secluded to Zaun, without backup and provisions and many beaten Zaunites looking for their own pound of flesh.

After a month of nonstop terror from the Goddess and many injured and homeless within Piltover, its Council flew up a white flag and begged for an audience.

Upon the Bridge of Progress, Janna stood mighty, if not unproud of her destruction, and yet resolute in her decision. She was done watching the mindless cruelty and violence to her people and would be ruling over them from then on.

An accord was struck that day.

Zaun would be its own nation from then on, and Piltover would pay compensation to the people for their negligence, in the form of money, technology, healthcare, and education.

An accord, that Piltover had no other choice but to agree to.

And this is how we come to Zaun today, under Janna's rule.

A city crushed by oppression and poverty, now turned metropolis of renewed vigor and spirit.

Zaun has transformed within the past seventy years into a technological paradise, built of off science and magic.

Its once toxic air has been dissipated by the trees that now grow within and upon every building, sustained by the HexTech-empowered artificial sun bolted to the cavern ceiling, and scheduled rainy days using the sprinkler system stretched out throughout the city. Water filtration has drastically improved drinkable water, and botany has become an essential subject in every school.

Zaun is now the cultural hotspot in Runeterra, with many coming from all over the world to visit or call Zaun its home.

You'll now find many cultures thriving within the city, as well as old structures standing proud against the tides of time.

One such building is a bar/pub called The Last Drop.

Religions of all caliber operate in Zaun, but none hold a candle to the temples of the Wind Goddess.

Mages with elemental talent, are often in high demand as they assist in the evironmental stability of the city.

And although Enforcers do still operate within the city, their presence holds neither respect nor true authority. Many Zaunites will opt to seek the services of private security firms, such as The Eye Of Zaun or the newly formed Firelights flying through the city on their chem tech-powered hoverboards; invented by 15-year-old Ekko Bennet in 2015, making him one of Zaun's first adolescent millionaires.

However, Enforcers have been reported to tiptoe on the boundaries of the two cities accordance.

With reports of Zaun civilians being killed just on the outskirts of the city, and more than a few being assaulted and/or killed within back alleys of Zaun. It is not difficult to discern what is happening.

The Enforcers are either trying to return to their old ways, or someone is looking to profit of off a potential war.

Either way, Zaun will be ready for what comes at it.

It vows to not wait for their gentle Goddess to bloody her hands again for them, they are the warriors who built this town.

[dumbl0nd]

Suddenly I can't stop thinking about a jegulus royal!au where James transmigrates and meets Regulus (again), but Regulus is a princess (male trans repressed). So James starts hanging around him, asking random questions related to his alternative past. James discovers EVERYTHING about Regulus, and he falls for him harder and harder.

on ao3 now!

[scorpion-flower]

Apparently, covering your head with your country's flag, is also 'flirting' with being eliminated from the 'competition' 🤡

[salt-baby]

my beige flag is taking immense pleasure in shocking people with my disability

[masonjarsmoments]

Really glad I was able to wacht this man jump and even win live, Hvala Pero 💚💚

[wilimia]

Tp Link and Zelda hate each other. That's it that's the headcanon

[thelasthippie]

Humanity always had the problem to dont explore more than the things people around them show them (and take it as a TRUE reality)... At the 60's the governments made us belive that we would open our minds to change the situation, but the reality is nowadays, with algorythms is worst... Cuz u cant scape from the things that they show us... If you like some kind of things or you talk some kind of shit u will be trapped in your nasty reality... Is rly creepy... We r condemned, divided and hating each others for useless reasons made by an algortihm.

We failed as an intelligent specie.

I only hope this end as soon as possible. With wisdom and dialogue changing our society, with technology taking the power of the world or with hundreds of atomic bombs erasing us. But end as soon as possible please...