#sophisticated algorithms

[ai-innova7ions]

Simplify Art & Design with Leonardo's AI Tools!

Leonardo AI is transforming the creative industry with its cutting-edge platform that enhances workflows through advanced machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. Artists and designers can create high-quality images and videos using a dynamic user-friendly interface that offers full creative control.

The platform automates time-consuming tasks, inspiring new creative possibilities while allowing us to experiment with various styles and customized models for precise results. With robust tools like image generation, canvas editing, and universal upscaling, Leonardo AI becomes an essential asset for both beginners and professionals alike.

#LeonardoAI

#DigitalCreativity

#Neturbiz Enterprises - AI Innovations

[whetstonefires]

'Saying things in a funny way' is an op skillset for real though.

Latest example 'when you're late coming home and I don't know why I get worried about you and think perhaps there has been a car accident and this is why I send check-in texts' = distressing concept, explains the texting as something other than controlling behavior but still sounds neurotic and may increase any aversion felt toward it

'When I don't know why you aren't home yet I start to think maybe you got eaten by a car' = funny, sympathetic, likely to make such texts less burdensome to receive.

Why is communication like this.

[arthoure]

Messing with AI chatbots...that's an insta-unfollow from me

[lueddegen]

The whole AI trend makes it frighteningly obvious how many people don’t seem to understand that many of us artists in whatever craft, many of us humans in general, simply enjoy the process of creating something, and that the time and care put into the result often gives it more value than the subjective quality of the result itself.

Possibly the greatest NPR exchange ever recorded

[strategyapex]

Advanced Applications of Williams Moving Average in Modern Futures Trading

The Williams Moving Average has evolved into a sophisticated tool used by professional futures traders, algorithmic trading systems, and institutional investors. Its advanced capabilities in trend detection and market timing make it particularly valuable in modern trading environments.

Advanced applications of the WMA include multi-timeframe analysis, volatility adaptation, dynamic support/resistance levels, momentum confirmation, and risk management implementation. These techniques are especially effective in high-volume futures markets, commodity trading, index futures, currency futures, and energy futures.

These sophisticated applications provide more precise entry/exit points, better risk management, reduced false signals, enhanced trend confirmation, and improved overall trading performance.

Advanced WMA Implementation Strategies:

Adaptive Time-Frame System:

Use multiple WMAs of different lengths

Adjust WMA periods based on market volatility

Implement dynamic crossover signals

Create composite trend signals

Volatility-Based Strategy:

Modify WMA length based on ATR

Adjust position sizing with volatility

Implement variable stop-loss levels

Use volatility filters for trade entry

Advanced Automated Implementation:

Code multiple WMA variations

Create adaptive parameter adjustments

Implement machine learning optimization

Develop sophisticated exit strategies

The advanced applications of the Williams Moving Average demonstrate its versatility and continued relevance in today's sophisticated trading landscape. As markets evolve and trading becomes increasingly automated, the ability to implement adaptive and dynamic strategies becomes crucial. The WMA's flexibility in accommodating these advanced applications makes it an invaluable tool for modern traders. By incorporating these sophisticated techniques into automated trading systems, traders can potentially achieve more consistent results while maintaining the ability to adapt to changing market conditions. As technology continues to advance, we can expect to see even more innovative applications of this versatile indicator in futures trading.

[artspace11275201418]

The Complexities of AI-Human Collaboration

Introduction

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been revolutionizing many facets of our lives, from improving our ability to make decisions to automating repetitive jobs. The cooperation of AI systems and people is one of the most important advances in this sector. Despite all of its potential, this alliance is not without its difficulties and complexity. The complexities of AI-human collaboration will be discussed in this blog post, along with its advantages, disadvantages, ethical implications, and prospects for peaceful cohabitation with machine intelligence.

I. The Potential for AI and Human Cooperation

1.1 Improved Judgment-Making

AI systems can process and analyze data faster and on a larger scale than humans can because of their sophisticated algorithms and large datasets. They can offer priceless insights in group settings, assisting others in making better judgments. This is especially true in industries like healthcare, where AI can help physicians diagnose more difficult-to-treat illnesses by examining patient information and medical imaging.

1.2 Efficiency and Automation

Automation powered by AI has the potential to optimize workflows in a variety of sectors, lowering labor costs and boosting output. For instance, in manufacturing, humans can concentrate on more sophisticated and creative aspects of the work while robots and AI-powered machinery perform repetitive and labor-intensive jobs with precision.

1.3 Customized Activities

Many internet services now come with AI-driven customization as standard functionality, from customized marketing campaigns to streaming platform recommendation algorithms. Businesses may increase user pleasure and engagement by working with AI to provide highly tailored experiences for their customers.

II. The Difficulties of AI-Human Coordination

2.1 Moral Conundrums

AI creates ethical concerns about privacy, data security, and justice as technology gets more and more ingrained in our daily lives. Ethical standards must be followed by collaborative AI systems to guarantee responsible data utilization, non-discrimination, and transparency. The difficulties in upholding moral AI-human cooperation are demonstrated by the Cambridge Analytica controversy and the ongoing discussions about algorithmic bias and data privacy.

2.2 Loss of Employment

There has been a lot of talk about the threat of automation leading to job displacement. Although AI can replace repetitive activities, it also begs the question of what a human's place in the workplace is. Businesses must carefully weigh the advantages of efficiency brought about by AI against the social and economic ramifications of job displacement.

2.3 Diminished Contextual Awareness

Despite their strength, AI systems frequently fail to comprehend the larger context of human relationships and emotions. This restriction may cause miscommunications, erroneous interpretations, and even harmful choices, particularly in delicate or emotional situations such as healthcare or customer service.

2.4 Accountability and Trust

For AI systems to be successfully integrated into a variety of disciplines, trust is essential. Establishing and preserving trust in AI calls for openness, responsibility, and resolving the possibility of biases and mistakes. Trust-related issues may make it more difficult for AI and people to work together seamlessly.

III. AI-Human Collaboration in Real-world Locations

3.1 Medical Care

Healthcare practitioners have benefited from the usage of AI-powered diagnostic systems, such as IBM's Watson, to help with disease diagnosis and therapy recommendations. AI and medical professionals working together may result in quicker and more precise diagnosis and treatment—possibly saving lives.

3.2 Self-Driving Cars

AI-human cooperation is essential to the development of self-driving cars. The AI system drives, but humans are needed for supervision, making decisions in difficult circumstances, and handling unforeseen circumstances. The goal of this collaboration is to increase traffic safety and lessen accidents.

3.3 Client Assistance

Chatbots and virtual assistants are widely used by organizations to respond to standard client inquiries. Artificial intelligence (AI) can effectively respond to routine inquiries, but human agents are on hand to handle trickier problems and add a personal touch, resulting in a flawless customer care experience.

3.4 Producing Content

AI is being used to create content, including music compositions, news articles, and even artwork. AI systems work with journalists and artists to discover new avenues for creativity. However, questions remain regarding the validity and uniqueness of information created by AI.

IV. Getting Past the Difficulties

4.1 Development of Ethics in AI

It is imperative that organizations and developers give ethical AI development top priority by integrating values like accountability, transparency, justice, and data privacy into their operations. Strong legal frameworks, moral standards, and continuous supervision can help achieve this.

4.2 Training using Human-AI

Promoting effective collaboration requires educating people about AI and its capabilities. Users can operate more productively with AI technologies by understanding the advantages and disadvantages of these systems with the aid of training programs.

4.3 Combo Positions

Fears of job displacement can be reduced by designing employment positions that combine human and AI activities. By utilizing AI's potential while retaining human supervision and knowledge, this strategy creates a hybrid workforce that benefits from the best aspects of both approaches.

4.4 Creating Collaborative Designs

AI-human collaboration should be considered while designing user interfaces and systems. This entails making certain that AI systems are simple to operate, offer understandable feedback, and blend in with current workflows.

V. AI-Human Collaboration's Future

5.1 Intelligent Augmentation

The idea of enhanced intelligence, in which AI systems complement human abilities rather than replace them, holds the key to the future of AI-human collaboration. AI will become a crucial tool to unlock human potential across a range of domains as it develops.

5.2 AI as an Adjunct Complement

AI will increasingly function as a  human providing support, insight, and automating repetitive chores. This collaboration could increase productivity and efficiency in a variety of fields.

5.3 Frameworks for Ethics and Regulations

The establishment of moral and legal frameworks that uphold user rights and promote responsible AI use will be necessary for the growth of AI-human collaboration. These frameworks will aid in addressing the issues of algorithmic bias, accountability, and data privacy.

5.4 Ongoing Education

To properly interact, humans and AI systems will both need to constantly adapt and learn new things. While AI systems will need constant training to increase their comprehension of human context and emotions, humans will need to stay informed about AI capabilities and limitations.

In summary

There is no denying the complexity of AI-human collaboration; it raises issues with ethics, potential job displacement, and comprehension and trust. But by working together, AI and humans can create tailored experiences, increased decision-making, and automation, which makes this an interesting direction for the future. We can create the conditions for peaceful coexistence of human and machine intelligence by tackling these difficulties through ethical growth, training, and hybrid employment roles. This will open up a world of opportunities that will benefit people individually as well as society at large. Future AI-human cooperation has the potential to be a revolutionary force that ushers in a period of expanded human capabilities and augmented intelligence.

If all of my readers want to know more about Artificial intelligence at the current time please read This book to enhance your knowladge: https://amzn.to/3Sr5Tbo

[ohnoitstbskyen]

re: Somerton

Not for nothing, but I think we should remember that James Somerton's fans and subscribers are normal people, just like you. They are people who received his output in good faith, and extended to him a normal amount of grace and benefit of the doubt, which he took advantage of.

I don't think it's helpful to respond to the exposé on Somerton with sentiments along the lines of "wow, how could anyone ever think THIS GUY'S videos were any good, ha ha ha, how did he ever get subscribers?" because 1) you have the substantial benefit of hindsight and a disengaged outsider perspective, and 2) it's a rhetoric that creates a divide between you (refined, savvy, smart, sophisticated) and Somerton's audience (gullible, unrefined, easily taken advantage of, terrible taste), which is a false divide, with a false sense of security.

Somerton's success happened because he stole good writing. He found interesting, insightful, in-depth work done by other people, applied the one skill he actually has which is marketing, and re-packaged it as his own. He targeted a market which is starving for the exact kind of writing he was stealing, and pushed his audience to disengage from sources that conflicted with him.

Hbomberguy makes this point in his exposé video: good queer writing is hard to find and incredibly easy to lose. The writers Somerton stole from were often poor or precarious, writing freelance work for small circles under shitty conditions, without the means or the reach or the privileges necessary to find bigger markets. And, as Hbomb demonstrated, when people did discover Somerton's plagiarism, he used his substantial audience to hound them away and dissuade anyone else from trying to hold him accountable.

He stole queer writing by marginalized people, about experiences and perspectives that people are desperate to hear more about, and even if his delivery and aesthetics were naff, his words resonated with people because the original writers who actually wrote them poured their goddamn hearts and souls into it.

Somerton also maintained a consistent narrative of persecution and marginalization about himself. He took the plain truth, which is that queer people and perspectives are discriminated against, and worked that into a story about himself as a lone, brave truth-teller, daring to voice an authentic queer perspective, constantly beset by bigots and adversaries who sought to tear him down. As @aranock, who works with some of the people he targeted, writes in this post, Somerton weaponized whatever casual bias and bigotry he could find in his audience to reinforce his me vs them narrative (usually misogyny and various forms of transphobia), which is what grifters do. They find a vulnerable thread in a community and pull on it. And while you may not have the particular vulnerability that he exploited, you do have vulnerabilities, and they can be exploited too.

People felt compelled to support him, even if his work was sometimes shoddy, because he presented himself as a vulnerable, marginalized person in need of help, he pulled on that vulnerable thread.

Again, he has a degree in marketing, and just like propaganda, nobody is immune to marketing.

YouTube as a system is set up to push for more, constantly more. More content, more videos, more output, more more more more, and part of Somerton and Illuminaughty's success was their ability to push out large amounts of content to the hungry algorithm, even if it was of inferior quality. The algorithm rewarded their volume of output with more eyeballs and attention, and therefore more opportunities to find people who were vulnerable to their grift.

It is a system which quite literally rewards the exact kind of plagiarism that they do, because watch-time and engagement are easily measurable metrics for a corporation, and academic rigor is not. There is pressure to deliver, and a lot of rewards to gain from cutting corners to do it.

Somerton and Illuminaughty and Internet Historian are extreme and very obvious cases, so blatant that you can make a four hour video essay exposing what they've done, but the vast majority of this kind of plagiarism isn't going to be obvious - sometimes it might not even be obvious to the people who are doing it. Casual plagiarism is endemic to the modern internet, and most people don't get educated on what the exact boundaries are between proper sourcing and quoting vs plagiarizing. We had an entire course module at my university aimed at teaching students the exact differences and definitions, and people still made good faith mistakes in their essays and papers that they had to learn to correct during their education.

All of this to say: it is extremely easy in hindsight to call Somerton's work shitty and shoddy, his aesthetics flat and uninspired, and to imagine that as a sophisticated person with good taste and critical faculties, you would never be taken in by this kind of grifter. It is extremely easy to distance yourself from the people he preyed on, and imagine that you will never have to worry about your fave doing your dirty like that.

But part of the point of Hbomberguy's video is that plagiarism is extremely easy to get away with, and often difficult for the average person to spot and call out, and with the rise of AI tools blurring the lines even further, it is not going to get any easier.

So I think we should resist the temptation to think of Somerton's audience as people with bad taste and poor faculties. We should resist the temptation to distance ourselves from the perfectly normal people he preyed on. Many times in your life, a modestly clever man with a marketing degree has fooled you too.

On a personal note, by the same token, I am resisting the temptation to assume that I am too good to be vulnerable to the systemic pressures that produced Somerton and Illuminaughty. No, I've never made a video by word-for-word reciting someone else's work, but I know for a fact that I could do a better job of double-checking my work and citing my sources. I feel the exact same pressure to get a video out as fast as possible, I have the exact same rewards dangled in front of me by YouTube as a platform, and I can't pretend it doesn't affect my work. To me, Hbomb's video felt like a wake-up call to do better.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

One of the inspirations for the founding of Xiaohongshu was to share wearable fashion, so the fashion section is an important part here, and its algorithms are very sophisticated, if you keep clicking on fashion related, you'll see a planet of beauty and fashion bloggers, as well as models and influencers that doesn't even look like real human (just like ins there are a lot of them in us too), who post videos that are edited and filtered exquisitely and beautifully (not that this is a bad thing) in order to earn clicks, xhs actually have tons of 素人 who aren't in the fashion field, and a lot of bloggers who don't wear makeup and post videos directly without filters

[transmutationisms]

it feels like a fairly trivial point that any observation of reality also becomes part of that reality once it is made. like that is not really that sophisticated a point to make and yet every silicon adjacent data optimising hedge fund beholden tech/media class member seems to relearn and then forget this lesson so constantly. hey guys do you think if you publish exit poll results while voting is still going on it might change the outcome of the election. do you think if the spotify algorithm is recommending things based on listener data it might be shaping those behaviours and not just observing them. do you think if 'ai' is scraping up the collective wisdom of the internet it might also be basing its own predictive text on the similarly predictive text of every other 'ai'. etc

[httpvomitello]

Hey hi can you do TMNT headcanons for when they find out you hate pizza?? But you’ve been pushing through because you’re down bad for them 🥲

Oh nooo! The taste of betrayal 😭 poor babies... Anyways, I hope you like it! ♡♡♡♡

Leo is surprisingly oblivious to your pizza disdain at first, especially since you’re always a good sport about it

You’ve been eating it with him during every hangout, and he’s convinced you’re totally on board with the pizza life.

One day, while watching a movie, you casually mention that you’re not the biggest fan of pizza, and Leo’s brain short-circuits. He pauses mid-bite, staring at you in disbelief. “Wait… you hate pizza? And you’ve been eating it just for me?”

After learning you’ve been enduring pizza for him, Leo teases you relentlessly, but in that smug, charming way

"So, how many more slices were you gonna choke down before telling me, huh?” He’ll flash that confident grin, knowing he has the upper hand.

Leo would absolutely make it a point to surprise you with food from your favorite restaurant one day, playing it off cool, like it was no big deal

“Thought we’d switch it up tonight. No pizza. Just you, me, and your favorite dish.”

When the team inevitably orders pizza again, Leo will dramatically shield you from the sight, covering your eyes with his hands

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to suffer anymore. You’re safe now.” You’ll both end up laughing, but it becomes a running joke.

Donnie’s the type to notice something is off long before you confess

When he finally finds out, probably through an offhand comment from you, he looks at you with wide eyes, then immediately questions his observational skills

“Wait. You’ve been eating pizza this entire time… and dislike it? That’s borderline masochism.”

He’ll probably do some deep dive research on food preferences and intolerance, just in case you weren’t telling him the whole truth

To make up for it, Donnie starts coding a highly sophisticated "Perfect Pizza Finder" algorithm. It takes your tastes into account and suggests custom pizza recipes that are more suited to you

“With this, you’ll never hate pizza again!”

When the two of you eat together from then on, Donnie will insist on creating the menu himself

"This time, it’ll be something your taste buds actually enjoy." And he’ll use all his high-tech gadgets to make sure it’s perfect every time.

He’ll go above and beyond to make sure you’re not suffering anymore, all while teasing you for your initial sacrifice.

Mikey is devastated when he finds out you don’t like pizza

You’ve been his pizza buddy for so long that it’s practically a core part of your relationship in his eyes

So when you finally break the news, he’s dramatically heartbroken: “You’ve been living a lie?!”

At first, he thinks you’re joking, but when you assure him that you really don’t like pizza, he looks at you with genuine confusion

“But… why didn’t you say something?!”

You confess that you’ve been eating it for him because you like him, and he melts on the spot

Mikey is beyond flattered and immediately starts brainstorming pizza alternatives just for you

“What about pizza rolls? Pizza with, like, no sauce? Dessert pizza? There’s gotta be some pizza variation that’ll win you over!”

Even though pizza is still his #1 love, Mikey’s happy to switch it up for your sake. He’ll start planning more food adventures that cater to your taste, often suggesting new foods to try together and making sure you never have to force down a slice again.

When Raph finds out, he’s shocked you didn’t say anything earlier, but he also feels kinda guilty

“Why didn’t you tell me, dumbass? You didn’t have to force yourself to eat that greasy stuff for me.”

After that, he becomes super protective of your food choices

He’s not about to let you suffer through pizza again if he can help it

“From now on, we eat what you like, got it?”

Raph’s way of making it up to you is offering to cook up something himself

He might not be the best cook, but he tries hard, and it’s kind of adorable watching him fumble with a spatula in the kitchen

Whenever his brothers tease you about it, Raph is quick to shut them down. “They did it for me, so back off.”

He’s secretly proud that you were willing to push through for him, and he might even feel in love even more.

[ai-innova7ions]

Simplify Art & Design with Leonardo's AI Tools!

Leonardo AI is transforming the creative industry with its cutting-edge platform that enhances workflows through advanced machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. Artists and designers can create high-quality images and videos using a dynamic user-friendly interface that offers full creative control.

The platform automates time-consuming tasks, inspiring new creative possibilities while allowing us to experiment with various styles and customized models for precise results. With robust tools like image generation, canvas editing, and universal upscaling, Leonardo AI becomes an essential asset for both beginners and professionals alike.

#LeonardoAI

#DigitalCreativity

#Neturbiz Enterprises - AI Innovations

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766

But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:

https://searchengineland.com/is-google-search-getting-worse-389658

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.

This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/google-paid-26-3-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021

Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works – just that it works for people stupider than them."

And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

A viral post by Housefresh – who review air purifiers – describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."

But these grandiose claims – like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in Better Homes and Gardens's Des Moines lab – result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.

Most damning of all is how the Better Homes and Gardens top air purifiers perform in comparison to the – extensively documented – tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like ‘the Tesla of air purifiers.’"

One of the top ranked items on BH&G comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model BH&G chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by Consumer Reports. Either BH&G's rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or BH&G absolutely sucks at rigorous testing.

BH&G's competitors commit the same sins – literally, the exact same sins. Real Simple's reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." Real Simple has the same corporate parent as BH&G: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a lot of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.

But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists 22 air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.

A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like Popular Science, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs PopSci makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they loooove Molekule).

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal.

Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.

https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/welcome-to-the-cnet-smart-home/

Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like BH&G into our eyeballs instead.

In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.

An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh – through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all – so they can put a lot more content up that Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.

Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in…making more botshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.

That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

When Google admits that it's losing the war to these kack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's very frustrating. When they vaporize seventy billion dollars on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's outrageous.

Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground – and endless temptation – for scammers.

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/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

[mariacallous]

If you’ve rented an apartment in the US in the past several years, you may have had the sense that the game was rigged: Prices creep up not only at your building but at others throughout the city, seemingly in lockstep. A new civil lawsuit brought by the US Department of Justice today alleges that in many cases it’s not just in your head—and that a single company’s algorithm is to blame.

That company is RealPage, a Texas-based firm that provides commercial revenue management software for landlords. In other words, it helps set the prices of apartments. But it does so, the DOJ alleges in its lawsuit, by effectively helping its clients cheat; landlords feed rental rate and lease terms into the system, and the RealPage algorithm in turn spits out a suggested price that enables coordination and hinders competition.

“By feeding sensitive data into a sophisticated algorithm powered by artificial intelligence, RealPage has found a modern way to violate a century-old law through systematic coordination of rental housing prices,” deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco said in a statement.

RealPage’s reach is broad. It controls 80 percent of the market for software of its kind, which in turn is used to set prices of around 3 million units across the country, according to the DOJ. It already faces multiple lawsuits, including one from the state of Arizona and another in Washington, DC, where RealPage software is allegedly used to price more than 90 percent of units in large apartment buildings. RealPage’s algorithmic pricing first gained broader attention when a 2022 ProPublica investigation detailed how the company’s YieldStar software works.

The DOJ civil lawsuit, which was joined by the attorneys general of eight states, is a significant escalation in legal action against the company. It’s also a first for the DOJ, according to officials speaking on background during a call to discuss the complaint. While the government had previously filed criminal charges against an Amazon seller for algorithm-enabled price-fixing, this is the first civil action in which the algorithm itself, the Justice Department official says, was effectively the means of the violation.

The complaint itself quotes RealPage executives allegedly acknowledging anticompetitive aspects of its product. “There is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps the entire industry down,” one RealPage executive allegedly wrote.

RealPage has repeatedly denied any allegations of antitrust violations, going so far as to publish a six-page digital pamphlet that claims to tell “the Real Story” about its products, along with an extensive FAQ page on a dedicated public policy website. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Attacks on the industry’s revenue management are based on demonstrably false information,” one section of that site reads. “RealPage revenue management software benefits both housing providers and residents.”

“We are disappointed that, after multiple years of education and cooperation on the antitrust matters concerning RealPage, the DOJ has chosen this moment to pursue a lawsuit that seeks to scapegoat pro-competitive technology that has been used responsibly for years,” said Jennifer Bowcock, senior vice president of communications and creative at RealPage, in an emailed statement. “RealPage’s revenue management software is purposely built to be legally compliant, and we have a long history of working constructively with the DOJ to show that."

The DOJ disagrees. “Algorithms don’t exist in a law-free zone,” said Monaco in a press conference to discuss the case. “Training a machine to break the law is still breaking the law.”

In this case, the complaint alleges that those algorithms consistently drove rental prices upward. “RealPage’s software tends to maximize price increases, minimize price decreases, and maximize landlords’ pricing power,” said the DOJ in a press release. RealPage also doesn’t just recommend prices; in many cases, it actively sets them.

“RealPage actively polices landlords’ compliance with those recommendations,” said US attorney general Merrick Garland in today’s press conference. “A large number of landlords effectively agree to outsource their pricing decisions to RealPage by using an ‘auto-accept’ setting that effectively permits RealPage to determine the price a renter will pay.”

The DOJ also claims RealPage has created a “self-reinforcing feedback loop” with its data intake and pricing recommendations structure that also gives it an alleged monopoly in the apartment revenue management software industry. Any competitor who plays by the rules, the DOJ claims, is at a distinct disadvantage.

The Justice Department has spent the past several years staffing up with technologists and data scientists, better enabling them to “interrogate the code,” as multiple officials described the investigative process. While this is the first major algorithmic collusion case, DOJ officials suggested it would be far from the last.

[quasi-normalcy]

I think that there's a tendency to believe technocratic elites must run on sophisticated data-driven mathematical algorithms and 8-dimensional chess or whatever when in reality they're just as stupid, faddish, and susceptible to scams as anyone else.

[alumirare]

Remember when I said in the tags I would do doodles of the Cyberpunk Dead Boy AU TCNick3 and Vernias? Well

My ass is trying to develop a story and characters with this AU using the mv and lyrics right now god 😭

Brent’s the woman at the start (google translate or whatever) who says something like “The music you wrote is not able to be used at this time. Please rewrite it again.” Or smth. I imagine them to be the manager behind the algorithm or whatever you call it

and Sophist is those typical “trendy artists” who make music only for the money and fame and thinks they are the only way to go about his life

[woncheolisms]

services. (fushiguro toji x reader)

summary: With how hectic your life is, you have no room for relationships. But you still have needs, and so you decide to pay to have those needs met.

word count: 4372

warnings: fem!reader, escort!toji, porn with minimal plot, smut, unprotected sex, oral (fem!receiving), fingering, daddy kink, choking, biting, this is so self indulgent pls dont judge me.

A million guesses in the world and you never would have predicted that you would be spending your Saturday night like this.

The only sound in your living room was the tick, tick, tick of the wall clock, as well as your occasional fidgeting. Your jeans rustled from where your leg was bouncing, an outlet for your nervous energy. You played with the sleeves of your sweater, rocking back and forth just slightly. You couldn’t decide what you wanted to blame this jittery feeling on, your anxiety or the cold. You wanted to go with the latter but you knew that what you were doing right now meant it had to be the former.

Who else would be waiting for a fucking escort to come to their house?

You looked at the clock again and rolled your eyes at your own antics. It was still ten more minutes before he was supposed to get here. Why were you already so clammy and shaky? This was pathetic. Well, getting an escort was pretty pathetic in itself, but this had to be a new low.

Honestly, you hadn’t expected yourself to be in this position. When a coworker had been venting about how your grueling profession and long working hours left no room for having a personal life, you had enthusiastically agreed. It was something you had been struggling with for years. It was the reason your last boyfriend had broken up with you, saying your job was way too time consuming and he felt ignored. He hadn’t been wrong. You were working more hours than anyone else you knew. And while you loved your job and wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world, you knew it meant sacrificing relationships. Sacrificing love and intimacy and even the simple act of a physical touch.

At this point you were so touch starved it hurt.

Your coworker had then recommended this escort service, saying that it had literally saved her life. An over exaggeration on her part, you were sure, but when you had looked at their website and seen how systematic and professional everything was, you really were taken by surprise. The website was clean and organized, and it took everything into consideration. Hell, they even had you fill out a consent form that was almost six pages long, and it had every kink and sexual option known to mankind. The website claimed that the service had a sophisticated algorithm to make sure it matched every client with an escort best suited for their sexual needs, and it encouraged you to be completely honest when filling the form.

Your face had burned as you read through the form, but you thought long and hard about every option you ticked yes or no on. You were lost, truly, because you had a lot of fantasies in your head but many were ones you had never tried before, even with previous partners. It made you hesitate, and you wondered if these were things you wanted to try for the first time with a complete stranger.

“Oh, trust me, you do.” Mei Mei, your coworker, had responded when you talked to her about your woes. She swung her leg and she took a swig of her coffee, leaning back and giving you a teasing smirk. “When I say these men know what they are doing, they know what they are doing. I would argue this is the best option if you wanna be adventurous in the sheets. Because no matter how you respond, the guy will know how to handle it.”

So after many days of ruminating and carefully curating your form, choosing yes on every option you wanted to try, you had taken a deep breath and submitted it. You felt instant regret as soon as you clicked send, wondering what the fuck you were doing. You were a successful career woman, and here you were, hiring a man to come fuck you in sinful ways. God, what had you come to? If your ex could see you now….

Over the next few days, you went through the payment process and finalizing a time slot for yourself. You talked on the phone to a very nice sounding middle aged lady who had the perfect customer service voice, who told you all the details you needed to know, how many hours your were getting, sending you a number where you could contact the agency afterwards, and a whole bunch of other stuff, finally ending it by letting you know the name of the man they had matched you up with.

Fushiguro Toji.

You gulped as you wrote the name down on the paper you were noting everything else on, tuning out her next words for a bit as you stared down at it. So this was the man you were going to have sex with. Was this okay? Or had you completely lost your mind and your self respect officially?

When you finally hung up, you mulled over the option of just canceling. But the thought only annoyed you. Come on, Y/N, what’s the big deal? The lady on the phone said they were a large, country wide agency who had thousands of clients. So they’re probably doing something right. And who cares? You’re a hardworking woman, and you still have needs. You’re just fulfilling a need you have. That’s it.

Pull yourself together.

And so here you were, on a cold Saturday evening, waiting for this Fushiguro Toji to show up at your door. You nearly jumped out of your skin when the doorbell rang, just two minutes before the agreed time. You stood up quickly, swaying a bit because of how shaky your legs felt, before taking a deep breath and walking to the door. You put your eye up to the peephole, cursing when you saw only chest and shoulders, unable to get a glimpse of his face. You were so panicked that you didn’t even register that this meant he was extremely tall. You only clocked in that fact when you finally opened the door.

It was the first thing you noticed. Just how massive he was. Even though his loose sweatshirt hid most of him, there was no questioning how broad his shoulders were, or how he stood so tall that you nearly dwarfed in comparison. You felt your heart skip, swooning. 10/10 for the escort agency on the size kink option. This man was huge.

He had jet black hair, spiky but tamed, and it looked soft as hell. He looked down at you with a little smirk, and your eye caught the scar on the corner of his mouth. It somehow added to how sexy he was, and you swallowed hard. Yup, this guy was a walking wet dream.

You wanted to slam the door in his face.

He said your name questioningly, and you nodded to confirm your identity. Out of instinct, you said his name back, making him nod and his lip curl up just a bit more. You nearly shivered when his eyes quickly mapped over your figure. For a brief second, you wished you had dressed up a bit more than just your jeans and a sweater, but you doubted you could still look half as good as he did.

“C-come in.” You choked out, stepping aside to let him in. He lumbered inside, movements almost slow and lazy, but still smooth. Your breath hitched when his cologne flooded your senses. Fuck. He also smelled great.

Your hesitation only increased, but you shook your head. He’s probably been with a ton of women. His whole job is to look good and be good in bed. Of course he was attractive. The agency had promised that all their workers were physically good looking. You just hadn’t guessed they would be sex on legs.

By the time you closed the door, locked it and trudged into the living room, Toji was standing in the center of it, looking around with slow movements of his eyes. His hands were buried in the pockets of his jeans, and he was biting the inside of his cheek. He turned to look at you once you were in view again, and you watched him give you another once over. You tugged on your sleeves again, fueling your nervous habit. You heard him snort.

“My boss was right. You’ve never done this before.”

You blinked, not expecting him to say that, or have such a rough tone. It almost offended you, like he thought you were some loser. When he saw your scowl, he immediately raised his hands with a chuckle.

“Don’t mean it in a bad way, sweetheart. It’s kinda cute. Just took me off guard, considering the shit you ticked off on your form.”

Now that made you flush and fidget. The knowledge that this stranger knew everything you wanted in the bedroom was a little unnerving, and pairing that with how heated his gaze suddenly got, and you felt your core stir.

“Would you like some tea?” You blurted out, at a loss for what else to say. He raised his eyebrow in response, making you cringe.

“Or coffee.” You added weekly. “Or we could uh…. just start. Um, go to the bedroom? I don’t-” Your face was so hot, you wanted to cry. Finally, you sighed and gave up, feeling your shoulders slump. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

This made Toji let out a hearty cackle, walking to your couch and dropping heavily on it. He patted the spot next to him, which you promptly took, unable to meet his eyes any longer. You convinced yourself that you couldn’t have done this worse, so there was no way to go but up since you had already hit rock bottom.

“Why’d ya get an escort service?” Toji asked, snapping you from your thoughts. You looked at him and saw genuine curiosity in his eyes, under the bored veneer that stretched over his face. You shrugged.

“I work too much. I wanted stress relief. My coworker said your agency was good. Now I’m kinda regretting it.” You explained concisely.

The tiniest of smirks took residence on Toji’s face at your last words, his body turned towards you. He hooked his arm over the back of the couch, resting his head on his balled up fist as he stared at you. “You won’t regret it by the time I’m done with you, sweetheart.”

Your breath caught at his words, body stiffening. To Toji’s trained eye, your movement was obvious, and it made him chuckle.

“You like that? Well, I can’t be surprised. You’re big on dirty talk, aren’t ya?”

He moved closer as he talked, one hand reaching out until his finger was tracing down your cheekbone, over your jaw, up until he reached your lips. Your heart was beating a mile a minute, and your mouth opened on instinct.

“Wonder what kind of talk ya like more? Praise? You wanna be called a good girl? Or maybe the other kind? Maybe you’re a desperate little slut?”

His voice was rough, the air was charged, and despite the cold, heat flooded your veins. You felt like you could barely breathe, afraid to make any motion that could push Toji away. You felt your core pulse when he leaned forward.

“You familiar with the color system for safewords?”

You nodded almost imperceptibly. He hummed.

“Good.”

And then his lips were meeting yours.

It was slow, lazy, like all of his movements. His lips dragged over yours in an almost sensual way. His hand cupped the back of your head and tilted it to his liking, deepening the kiss more. His tongue teased your lips until you parted them, darting inside to slide it over yours. Your eyes rolled shut, shivers running over your spine, hands reaching up instinctively to curl into the material of his sweatshirt. He facilitated every move your mouth made, as if egging you to keep going, and you responded in kind, arching closer to him, pressing harder on his lips, even licking into his mouth a bit, albeit shyly. You felt his mouth curl as he pulled away, a wet squelch as your lips separated. You whined in protest, not even recognizing your voice, and he chuckled.

“We’ve got all night, sweets. Take it easy.”

His hands maneuvered you until he had you in his lap, and it was your first taste of Toji’s strength. You nearly keened at how easy it was for him to pull you around, and you once again felt your insides clench. Being on top of him made you feel intimately all the hard planes of his torso, and you finally let your hands wander. Toji didn’t stop you, watching your fingers disappear under his sweatshirt and meet his bare skin. You sucked in a sharp breath, tilting your head up to meet his lips again as your hands began their exploration.

Toji hummed, letting you guide the kiss this time, and you realized that he had played his cards very carefully to make sure you would come out of your shell. The thought turned you on even more, and you were absolutely sure that you had completely soaked through your lacy underwear by now. You pawed on his shirt, tugging it a bit.

“Take this off, please.”

Toji bit at your bottom lip. “Please what?”

You felt yourself flush hot, picking up on his implication. Another thing you had mentioned on your form. Your body stiffened but Toji squeezed at your sides, hands slipping under your sweater to rub your skin.

“Say it, baby. And I’ll do what you want.”

His lips were wandering, past your mouth, over your jaw and down your neck until his teeth were nibbling on the skin under your ear. Your eyes rolled up, subconsciously grinding down on his lap.

“Please,” you gasp when he sucked hard, likely leaving a hickey. “Please, daddy.”

Toji groaned, the first noise he had made all night, and it shot straight to your pussy. He reached behind him to tug his sweatshirt off, exposing him in all his muscled glory. Your mouth watered at the sight, hands running over him freely. You couldn’t believe you had this man under you, letting you grope and feel him up like this, looking up at you with eyes so predatory it nearly set off alarms in your head. Your touch was getting more and more firm as you continued touching him, his hands pushing down on your hips to encourage the way you were grinding on him. You felt his erection rub right between your legs, where you wanted him most, and you bit your lip in response. He felt big. Definitely the biggest you had ever had. You didn’t even have to look at it to know it would be a tight fit, and the thought of it made excitement zip through you. Your initial nervousness was dissipating, and all your repressed urges were now floating freely in your head.

You needed him to ruin you.

The thought made your movements more frantic, tugging and pulling at Toji, moaning into his lips when his hands wandered under your sweater and groped harshly at your breasts. God, when was the last time a man had touched you like this? You were so wet it made your whole body arch, pulsing with need.

“Daddy. Want- want you.” You whimpered in his ear, feeling his intake of breath at your words. Toji tugged your sweater off, pushing you back so he could take you in. You knew you already looked like a mess, and the thought made your face heat up. Toji smirked at you, stretching the little scar on the corner of his mouth. Without thinking, you leaned forward, licking at the healed over skin. His grip on your hips got impossibly tighter, and you knew it would leave bruises. He stood up, making you quickly wrap your legs around his waist, before walking towards your bedroom, which you pointed out. His lips never left your neck, nipping at any part he could reach, licking over you. You wondered if Toji had a thing for biting.

He was indulging everything you wanted, but a part of you wanted to indulge him too.

He tugged off your jeans and panties as soon as he had you lying on the bed, leaving you in only your bra. Your shyness seemed to have melted away at this point, your brain so foggy with need that you couldn’t think of anything except having him on top of you. Toji was quick to discard his own jeans, leaving him in his boxers, which were straining against the daunting bulge of his cock. You licked your lips at the sight, and the action didn’t go unnoticed by the man, who gave you a grin.

“You want my dick?”

You nodded eagerly, spreading your legs on instinct when he draped himself over you, slotting himself in the space you created. He hummed and licked his lips, eyes wandering over your figure. You felt yourself clench again at the heat behind his eyes.

“Let me get a taste of you first, sweetheart. Then you can have me.”

And then he lowered himself until his face was level with your bare pussy, breath fanning over it in a way that made your eyes flutter. You shouldn’t be shocked at how brazen he was, since this was his job, but it still surprised you. Your thoughts quickly melted away though, when he licked a fat stripe from the bottom to the top of your slit, parting your lips until he could lick at you unencumbered, swiping his tongue over your heat over and over.

You gasped and arched into him, feeling shivers run down your spread legs. Fuck, he was good. Of course he was good. His movements were purposeful, like he had done this a million times before (which he probably had). His tongue seemed to know every little nook and cranny that needed attention, gliding over your cunt until he circled your hole, sinking into the opening. You cried out when the tip hit your walls just right, enough stimulation to feel good but not nearly enough to satisfy. His lips and tongue left you breathless and wanting more. His massive hands held your thighs apart, teeth nibbling at your clit slightly until you were whining under him.

“Fuck. Toji.” Your voice already sounded so wrecked.

When his finger tip prodded at your entrance, you barely had time to process before he was sinking in, knuckle-deep. You cried out at the intrusion, eyes rolling when he curled it and seemed to immediately find your spot. You felt his lips twist up into a smirk when you cursed, knowing he had you.

His movements were merciless, one finger becoming two and pumping in and out of you so fast you were sure he would rip you apart. No matter how hard you clenched, his fingers were undeterred, as if he was adamant on ruining your cunt. You could hear the squelching of your juices, the sound filthy and so sexy it put you right on the edge. Toji seemed to notice. His dark eyes burned into yours, mouth lifting from your clit to let his fingers do all the work while he watched your writhe under his touch.

“You gonna cum, babygirl? Gonna soak my fucking hand? C’mon, baby. Wanna feel this pussy drench me. C’mon. Cum.”

His voice was so rough, adding to the sensations until you felt dizzy, muscles snapping stiff as you came all over his fingers. The noises grew even wetter, your juices flowing past his knuckles and down to his wrist. He hummed his approval, the sound set deep in his chest, eyes zoned in on your fluttering lips. When he pulled out, you let out a long, deep sigh. Your legs were trembling as Toji made his way up to you, licking up your neck before nipping at your earlobe.

“You got such a perfect cunt, baby.” He moaned into your ear, hips grinding down and pressing his clothed cock against you. “Perfect little pussy, fuck. You tellin’ me you haven’t been feedin’ her with cock on a daily basis? Because that’s what she deserves. To be stuffed full with a big dick every night. Soppy little filthy pussy like that needs loving daily.”

You keened at Toji’s words, your breath catching at how lewd he was being. He hooked a thumb into his boxers and tugged them down until his heavy cock sprang free and hit his stomach, tip flushed an angry maroon shade and leaking precum. Your mouth watered at the sight, not even caring about how big he was or how wide he would stretch you. You whined and wrapped your legs around his waist, trying to pull him closer.

“Need you, Daddy.” You breathed out.

“You have me, little girl.” He cooed, almost taunting. His lips were twisted into a wide grin, looking down at you with unbridled lust. You noticed how red the tips of his ears were, flushed down his neck as well. His hair was pushed back haphazardly out of his eyes, and his body was covered by a thin sheen of sweat. His eyes were blown.

When Toji finally sank his cock into you, in one slow stroke, he groaned and cursed loudly, sinking down to his elbows on either side of your head. He let out a long breath, cursing again before a large, rough hand came up and wrapped around your neck, squeezing the sides just a bit. You gasped and arched into him, eyelids fluttering. The light haziness in your head was now intensifying as Toji bullied his cock slowly but surely into your cunt, no matter how much it tried to resist the intrusion.

“Fuck.” His voice broke a little. And somehow, that was better than the orgasm he had just pulled out of you. Knowing you had that kind of effect on this man who had never met you before, that you were reducing him to this just by your body alone, made you feel powerful. You clenched around him on purpose, and his grip on your neck tightened, making you freeze. He looked down at you, his grin almost manic.

“You playin’ games with me, sweetheart? Nasty little slut. I never would’ve thought.”

He pulled out then, until only the tip of his cock was inside you, before surging forward, hips slamming hard into you. You screamed and arched, and Toji didn’t give you a second more, thrusting into you in earnest.

“You forgot I was the boss here, little girl. Me. Say it.”

You could barely choke the words out, having the wind knocked out of you with every brush of his cock on your g-spot.

“Y-you’re-” You screamed at a particularly brutal thrust, legs kicking and twitching. Toji’s grip on your neck tightened, and you could no longer breathe. Your eyes crossed at the feeling.

“Look at you. Can’t even say a word. Such a whore for daddy.”

When he eased his hold, you took in big gulps of air, only a few moments before he tightened his grip again. His movements didn’t slow down for one second, driving his cock into you at a maddening pace.

“I’m gonna-” You didn’t finish. You couldn’t. Because in that moment, your orgasm crashed into you like a freight train, so intense you could barely breathe, even despite Toji loosening the hold he had on your neck. Your vision blackened, stars bursting over it as you writhed and twitched under him. He didn’t stop fucking into you, didn’t even pause. He groaned when you came around his cock, and he kept going.

You realized that this was just the beginning of a very long night.

………………………………..

It was around 4 in the morning when you tapped out. Or rather, Toji finally let you tap out.

You had come so many times you couldn’t count. You had positively lost all feeling in your legs, and every muscle in your body was sore and buzzing. Toji had pulled and twisted you into every position known to man, spanked and slapped you around, choked you, tugged on your hair until your scalp tingled, and had stuffed his cock, fingers and tongue into your abused pussy so many times you felt like you were dying. It was the most you had ever felt, every sensation amplified, crying until tears soaked your cheeks, cumming until you just couldn’t anymore. He quite literally fucked the soul out of you, plain and simple.

Now you were lying on your side on the bed, watching with half lidded, barely open eyes as Toji tugged his clothes back onto his glorious, god-like frame. He had only a few marks. Your teeth marks on his neck and shoulders, and some scratches down his back. Compared to you, bitten and bruised all over, he looked unaffected.

He turned to look at you, smirking when he saw that you were already watching.

“You sure you’re done? Ya have me for two more hours at least.”

You nodded and let out an unflattering snort. “If I had to go one more round you might have to take me to the hospital.”

He let out a laugh at that, walking closer to you. He fished in the pocket of his sweatpants, pulling out a small, rectangular card. You could barely make out his name and number.

“Don’t call the service next time. Call me directly.”

You raised a teasing eyebrow. “You do personal services?”

He shrugged in return, sending you a sleazy wink. “Only for really sweet cunts like yours.”

You groaned and buried your face in the mattress, hearing him laugh loudly before standing up.

“I’ll see myself out.”

You didn’t move until you heard the front door slam, feeling your lips tug up in a smile. You would have to thank Mei Mei profusely for her recommendation. And now you understood that she didn’t exaggerate the effectiveness of this escort service.

This was definitely not the last time you would be seeing Fushiguro Toji.