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etirabys · 4 months

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meandering post about reading Orson Scott Card again

I've been offline starting at 9pm every day (except once. I was drunk at karaoke and asked for anons at 8:30pm) for six weeks, with the result that in befuddled boredom two nights ago I picked up Orson Scott Card's Songmaster from the house bookshelf.

I read Ender's Game and three sequels when I was a teen thought the books were mid. Since those are OSC's best works I assumed he had nothing more interesting to offer me and didn't try more of him for fifteen years, but Songmaster was compelling enough that I immediately afterwards picked up The Memory of Earth, the first book of a pentalogy.

TMoE is extremely my jam: after humanity blows itself up on Earth, AIs monitor thriving human civilizations in the planets that survivors managed to escape to, and suppress any tech that enables large scale violence by exerting low key mind control via satellites. But forty million years pass, many of the satellites break down, and the AI needs help from humans to restore capabilities. Because as its control wanes, people are starting to e.g. conceive of airplanes or bombs again, and override the injunctions against entering military alliances more than two edges of connection away.

The AI is worshipped as a god all over the planet, but the fourteen year old protagonist that becomes one of the AI's agents tells the AI from the beginning that he'll break with it if its morality seems wrong to him. I like the fourteen year old – unlike Ender or Songmaster's protagonist (adult minds piloting ten year old bodies), he's a normal gifted kid who's unpopular 50% due to his ego and big mouth and 50% because he's socially inept and offends people even when he's trying to be nice.

Songmaster is also partly about a permanent solution to large-scale violence, albeit through one guy who establishes a monopoly on violence and sweeps in pax galactica. Both it and TMoE are preoccupied with the eradication of suffering from evil / human violence, which is closer to my resonant frequency than narratives about defeating particular people or ideologies. At the moment I can't think of any other book with such an insistent focus on the matter than T.H. White's The Once and Future King. It's hard to make a compelling story out of, and I don't think Songmaster really succeeds, but TMoE's premise is well suited to explore that. (I'm also enjoying the matriarchal culture where everyone is expected to have multiple serial-monogamous marriages.) After reading 70% of TMoE last night I wrote:

Usually when I read fiction there's a small part of me going, how can I use this as fodder for my own growth, how can I remix or improve or react against this, how do the author and I measure against each other? (If the quality and content are at an anti-sweet spot, the small part becomes quite large and I feel all teeth towards the author.) But on occasion I read something so close that the absence of that measuring-feeling is its own sensation – ego departs, or at least is split across two bodies. There's just amity and recognition

And it's pretty interesting to feel this way about Card for, well, the reasons.

(If you're familiar with Card drama none of the following will be new to you; I'm coming to it fresh so the rest of this post is me going "uh... wow")

I vaguely knew he was a homophobic Mormon who'd gotten into fights about gay stuff, but I couldn't tell from the Ender books I read. But in Songmaster his issues spring off the page in such a weird way. Every fifth Goodreads review of this book is "Card, u gay?" because, well,

(One review, possibly from a fellow Mormon, that went "Card, it's so sinful of you to be this gay in your novel". Why did he write this book that would predictably make everyone mad...)

it's full of gay male desire. The protagonist (Ansset) is approximately a castrato and characters notice him sexually a lot. The first and only time Ansset has sex it's with a Kinsey 4-5 male character he loves, who's married to a woman but has fallen in love with Ansset. It turns out the drugs Ansset took to prolong his singing career painfully and only-kinda-figuratively explode your balls when you have your first orgasm and you'll never feel sexual desire again. (You'd think his loving teachers would have warned him of that, but, whatever, they didn't.) The other guy is literally castrated in punishment for inadvertently torturing a highly valuable castrato. It's pretty bald: GAY SEX IS ALMOST IRRESISTIBLY TEMPTING BUT YOU SHOULDN'T DO IT.

(Sidenote: both Ansset and the guy's wife are very close and have a "there's enough love to go around" attitude about the gay sex initially, before they go "wait Josif is a SERIAL MONOGAMIST... he can only love one person at a time... the moment he had the gay sex his marriage was destroyed". It's funny in a mildly stupid way that Card would set up this parable of homosexuality destroying lives and a marriage but almost everyone involved is peacefully ready to sail into an open marriage. I guess it makes sense if you want to say very clearly that THE GAY PART IS THE BAD PART)

which is fascinating to me, because... why would you tell on yourself like that

(81k also told me secondhand of an essay? interview? where Card openly says "we have to stand against legalizing gay marriage because everyone will get gay married and society will collapse", so that's informing my read of Songmaster as well)

I am pretty dang open about my personal life online but if I had a lot of feelings I thought were disgusting and immoral I would not write a novel dripping with those feelings before pointedly castrating the leads for them. Especially if it wasn't relevant to the actually highbrow themes of (checks notes) winning over your adversaries with kindness and never relinquishing your monopoly on violence. I would be so so so so embarrassed to let this go to print, it's so psychologically transparent, what was he thinking

(Well, I assume he's a very different person with different social incentives. For all I know, people in his church went "hey Orson we read your book and it's clear that you're gay but signaling strongly that you won't give into the gay feelings, we're here for you, it was really brave of you to publish this".)

#rambl #orson scott card #eti reads stuff #eti reads the homecoming saga #songmaster #content note: homophobia

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chiefdirector · 4 months

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Can you do one with Tim Bradford and reader where they are married. His wife is a well known officer in the K-9 unit with a German shepherd that does great work catching suspects. Maybe they had to call her in for an assignment..

Dog Days | Tim Bradford | The Rookie

"You have got to be kidding me," Tim groaned as he heard the call go out of the radio.

Normally, he would be happier that the K-9 unit had been called in, even if it meant that the current case was somewhat out of their depth. He would never complain about working with his wife, except from today.

"What's wrong?" Chen asked, shooting a confused look over to her Training Officer.

"Nothing, Boot." He snapped, keeping his eyes on the road as he pulled off the freeway. "Don't be nosy."

"I'm not- it's not important. When are the K-9 unit meeting us?"

"Whenever she can be bothered." He muttered under his breath.

Chen looked over to Bradford incredulously "What?"

"What?"

--------

"Blue, sit." Officer Bradford said, calling her dog to her heel. Blue had been assigned to her care for the last three years. They ate together, exercised together, Blue slept at the end of her bed; where (Y/N) Bradford went, Blue was never too far behind. "Good boy."

Once Blue was settled, Officer Bradford reached across for her radio on her belt, lifting it up. "Control, this is Officer (Y/N) Bradford. When is patrol getting here?"

"Patrol is arriving now." The radio buzzed, causing (Y/N) to look down the road where she saw a shop approaching. It only took a few moments for two officers, one she recognised and one she didn't. to clamber on out. SHe moved, beckoning Blue to come too, to meet her collegues.

(Y/N) kept her attention on the younger officer, paying no mind to the TO next to her. "Hi, you must be Chen. Control said you were coming. I'm ready to get started when you are."

"Sure," Chen smiled, before pointing to Tim, "and this is officer Bradford."

(Y/N) cast a side to the male officer, noticing that he was doing the same. "We've... met. Let's go, we're losing daylight."

--------

Chen was quickly losing her temper with the two senior officers as the three of them, four including Blue, searched through the overgrown garden for any sign of buried narcotics. Tim had decided to only communicate with (Y/N) through snide remarks, and (Y/N) only talked to Tim through Lucy.

"Thats it!" she snapped, causing the two senior officers to stop in their tracks and turn to her. "I don't know why you two don't like each other, but you need to stop acting like children and be professional."

"The only childish one here is-" Tim tried to defend, only to be cut of by (Y/N).

"Oh please, you started it."

"I did not!"

"Oh yeah?" (Y/N) asked incredulously, her focus zeroing in on the man, "You lied, Tim. You broke my trust!"

"It was Monopoly!"

"And you CHEATED."

"I did not!" Tim sighed.

He tried to walk away, only to be stopped by Lucy calling him back. "You guys know each other?"

Instead of responding, both of the senior officers raised their left hands, showing of their wedding bands. Chen nodded in recognition, before profusely apologising for her outburst, knowing that she would suffer the wrath of a Tim Test for this entire interaction.

(Y/N) went to make another remark when Blue started tugging on his lead, pulling her due east. Tim and Lucy followed after her at a quick pace, the childish bickering forgotten, at least for now.

Masterlist

#tim bradford #tim bradford x reader #tim bradford imagine #the rookie #the rookie imagine #chiefdirector #requests #anonymous

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nolonger-roses · 5 months

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Imagine the fellowship playing monopoly

Aragorn is the only one behaving like an adult and making everyone pay and this game is taking all of his lifetime and willpower

Sam and frodo have an alliance (they don't want to be the reason the other loses so they are a team)

Merry and Pippin are the devils. They want to win so they will make you suffer, they will buy anything they can even if that makes them poor and they will laugh at your face if you end up in their propety

Gandalf also wants to win so he buysthe expensives properties and waits until someone falls

Boromir didn't know how a fun afternoon playing games could turn into something like this. He beggins excelently and then he is in debt to pippin and merry

Gimli is taking it seriously. He balances what to buy and how to procede (and he wants to beat Legolas)

Legolas doesn't know what he is doing and he is winning somehow

#lotr #this is a cry for help #of course gimli is proud of legolas but #gimli #legolas #the fellowship of the ring #frodo #incorrect quotes #sam #samfro #gigolas #aragorn #hobbit

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

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Privacy first

The internet is embroiled in a vicious polycrisis: child safety, surveillance, discrimination, disinformation, polarization, monopoly, journalism collapse – not only have we failed to agree on what to do about these, there's not even a consensus that all of these are problems.

But in a new whitepaper, my EFF colleagues Corynne McSherry, Mario Trujillo, Cindy Cohn and Thorin Klosowski advance an exciting proposal that slices cleanly through this Gordian knot, which they call "Privacy First":

https://www.eff.org/wp/privacy-first-better-way-address-online-harms

Here's the "Privacy First" pitch: whatever is going on with all of the problems of the internet, all of these problems are made worse by commercial surveillance.

Worried your kid is being made miserable through targeted ads? No surveillance, no targeting.

Worried your uncle was turned into a Qanon by targeted disinformation? No surveillance, no targeting. Worried that racialized people are being targeted for discriminatory hiring or lending by algorithms? No surveillance, no targeting.

Worried that nation-state actors are exploiting surveillance data to attack elections, politicians, or civil servants? No surveillance, no surveillance data.

Worried that AI is being trained on your personal data? No surveillance, no training data.

Worried that the news is being killed by monopolists who exploit the advantage conferred by surveillance ads to cream 51% off every ad-dollar? No surveillance, no surveillance ads.

Worried that social media giants maintain their monopolies by filling up commercial moats with surveillance data? No surveillance, no surveillance moat.

The fact that commercial surveillance hurts so many groups of people in so many ways is terrible, of course, but it's also an amazing opportunity. Thus far, the individual constituencies for, say, saving the news or protecting kids have not been sufficient to change the way these big platforms work. But when you add up all the groups whose most urgent cause would be significantly improved by comprehensive federal privacy law, vigorously enforced, you get an unstoppable coalition.

America is decades behind on privacy. The last really big, broadly applicable privacy law we passed was a law banning video-store clerks from leaking your porn-rental habits to the press (Congress was worried about their own rental histories after a Supreme Court nominee's movie habits were published in the Washington City Paper):

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

In the decades since, we've gotten laws that poke around the edges of privacy, like HIPAA (for health) and COPPA (data on under-13s). Both laws are riddled with loopholes and neither is vigorously enforced:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/09/how-to-make-a-child-safe-tiktok/

Privacy First starts with the idea of passing a fit-for-purpose, 21st century privacy law with real enforcement teeth (a private right of action, which lets contingency lawyers sue on your behalf for a share of the winnings):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/americans-deserve-more-current-american-data-privacy-protection-act

Here's what should be in that law:

A ban on surveillance advertising:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/ban-online-behavioral-advertising

Data minimization: a prohibition on collecting or processing your data beyond what is strictly necessary to deliver the service you're seeking.

Strong opt-in: None of the consent theater click-throughs we suffer through today. If you don't give informed, voluntary, specific opt-in consent, the service can't collect your data. Ignoring a cookie click-through is not consent, so you can just bypass popups and know you won't be spied on.

No preemption. The commercial surveillance industry hates strong state privacy laws like the Illinois biometrics law, and they are hoping that a federal law will pre-empt all those state laws. Federal privacy law should be the floor on privacy nationwide – not the ceiling:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/federal-preemption-state-privacy-law-hurts-everyone

No arbitration. Your right to sue for violations of your privacy shouldn't be waivable in a clickthrough agreement:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/stop-forced-arbitration-data-privacy-legislation

No "pay for privacy." Privacy is not a luxury good. Everyone deserves privacy, and the people who can least afford to buy private alternatives are most vulnerable to privacy abuses:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/why-getting-paid-your-data-bad-deal

No tricks. Getting "consent" with confusing UIs and tiny fine print doesn't count:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/designing-welcome-mats-invite-user-privacy-0

A Privacy First approach doesn't merely help all the people harmed by surveillance, it also prevents the collateral damage that today's leading proposals create. For example, laws requiring services to force their users to prove their age ("to protect the kids") are a privacy nightmare. They're also unconstitutional and keep getting struck down.

A better way to improve the kid safety of the internet is to ban surveillance. A surveillance ban doesn't have the foreseeable abuses of a law like KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act), like bans on information about trans healthcare, medication abortions, or banned books:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/kids-online-safety-act-still-huge-danger-our-rights-online

When it comes to the news, banning surveillance advertising would pave the way for a shift to contextual ads (ads based on what you're looking at, not who you are). That switch would change the balance of power between news organizations and tech platforms – no media company will ever know as much about their readers as Google or Facebook do, but no tech company will ever know as much about a news outlet's content as the publisher does:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

This is a much better approach than the profit-sharing arrangements that are being trialed in Australia, Canada and France (these are sometimes called "News Bargaining Codes" or "Link Taxes"). Funding the news by guaranteeing it a share of Big Tech's profits makes the news into partisans for that profit – not the Big Tech watchdogs we need them to be. When Torstar, Canada's largest news publisher, struck a profit-sharing deal with Google, they killed their longrunning, excellent investigative "Defanging Big Tech" series.

A privacy law would also protect access to healthcare, especially in the post-Roe era, when Big Tech surveillance data is being used to target people who visit abortion clinics or secure medication abortions. It would end the practice of employers forcing workers to wear health-monitoring gadget. This is characterized as a "voluntary" way to get a "discount" on health insurance – but in practice, it's a way of punishing workers who refuse to let their bosses know about their sleep, fertility, and movements.

A privacy law would protect marginalized people from all kinds of digital discrimination, from unfair hiring to unfair lending to unfair renting. The commercial surveillance industry shovels endless quantities of our personal information into the furnaces that fuel these practices. A privacy law shuts off the fuel supply:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/digital-privacy-legislation-civil-rights-legislation

There are plenty of ways that AI will make our lives worse, but copyright won't fix it. For issues of labor exploitation (especially by creative workers), the answer lies in labor law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

And for many of AI's other harms, a muscular privacy law would starve AI of some of its most potentially toxic training data:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-updated-terms-to-use-customer-data-to-train-ai-2023-9

Meanwhile, if you're worried about foreign governments targeting Americans – officials, military, or just plain folks – a privacy law would cut off one of their most prolific and damaging source of information. All those lawmakers trying to ban Tiktok because it's a surveillance tool? What about banning surveillance, instead?

Monopolies and surveillance go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Some of the biggest tech empires were built on mountains of nonconsensually harvested private data – and they use that data to defend their monopolies. Legal privacy guarantees are a necessary precursor to data portability and interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

Once we are guaranteed a right to privacy, lawmakers and regulators can order tech giants to tear down their walled gardens, rather than relying on tech companies to (selectively) defend our privacy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The point here isn't that privacy fixes all the internet's woes. The policy is "privacy first," not "just privacy." When it comes to making a new, good internet, there's plenty of room for labor law, civil rights legislation, antitrust, and other legal regimes. But privacy has the biggest constituency, gets us the most bang for the buck, and has the fewest harmful side-effects. It's a policy we can all agree on, even if we don't agree on much else. It's a coalition in potentia that would be unstoppable in reality. Privacy first! Then – everything else!

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/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

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

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

#pluralistic #privacy first #eff #privacy #surveillance #surveillance advertising #cold war 2.0 #tiktok #saving the news from big tech #competition #interoperability #interop #online harms #ai #digital discrimination #discrimination #health care #hippa #medical privacy

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jellieland · 1 year

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Bdubs is more than familiar with the sound of a ticking clock. Oh BOY does he know the sound of a ticking clock. He has experience, you know.

It's a little different, though, when it's His Clock.

It looks just like the other clocks he has. Just like the first clock he had.

But the face, instead of showing when night turns to day, shows a number that is slowly getting smaller.

And it ticks very loudly.

No one else seems to hear it, though.

They have just started to get set up on the rocky mountain that they haven't come up with a proper name for yet when he asks Scar and Cleo about theirs.

"No no no, clocks are your thing Bdubs." Scar says airily. "I do other things. Like have monopolies and enchanting tables and things like that."

Cleo sighs. "Scar, have you really not looked at your clock yet?" At his confused face, they give him a long-suffering look. "It should be in your pocket."

Scar puts a hand in his pocket and pulls something out, looking delighted. "Wait, I get one too?" He holds it up and peers at it. "Oh, and I don't even have to read any numbers on it! Wow, this'll probably be useful at some point." He looks thoughtful. "I wonder if I could try to sell it to someone?"

"Well??" Asks Bdubs impatiently. "Are you gonna show us or not?"

"Oh yes, of course!" Scar holds it up.

It's different.

It's a very ornate hourglass, with some pieces set into it that look to Bdubs like gold. There is no number to read. No ticking to be heard. The sand drains steadily from top to bottom, falling resolutely one way even as Scar tilts it until it's horizontal, which he looks a bit disappointed about.

"That looks real fancy." Scar gets a thoughtful expression on his face. "I wonder if I could get the sand out if we need some to make something?"

"You are not using the sand of your life in a crafting recipe." Cleo says, which is a shame because Bdubs really wanted to see him try it.

Cleo squints at the hourglass, and points to the gold inlay. "Scar," They say, in a tone that suggests they know the answer to the question they're about to ask, "Is that pyrite?"

Scar and Bdubs exchange glances, and shrug.

"Pyrite?" At the blank looks, she continues. "You know. Fools gold?"

"Cleo!" Scar gasps, apparently deeply offended. "How could you say such a thing!"

"Ah yes!" Says Bdubs. "Fools gold. I knew it was that as soon as I laid eyes on it, of course. Only a fool would think otherwise!"

"Scar, I'm not saying that-" She pauses, and seems to consider. "No, you know what, nevermind." She turns to look at Bdubs, and raises an eyebrow. "And you did, did you?"

"Um. Anyway!" He says hurriedly. "What about your clock, Cleo?"

She looks at him for a moment longer, laughs slightly, and shrugs. "Yeah alright." She pulls out something that looks sort of like a stopwatch.

They present it to Scar and Bdubs.

The number ticks down.

"Nothing too fancy." They say. "Although apparently whoever's in charge of these likes to think they're funny." They flip it over. There's an inscription on the back.

"Memento Mori." He reads.

She smirks. "Remember you must die."

Maybe it's his imagination, but Bdubs could swear that he hears his clock tick a little louder.

Scar frowns. "Why is that-" He appears to abruptly remember Cleo's undead nature. "-ohhhhh. Riiiiight."

---

When he is chosen, it is really quite familiar.

The ticking is so loud that he can barely hear anyone else at all, until he sinks his axe into someone's back.

That's familiar too.

#limited life smp #limited life spoilers #bdoubleo100 #goodtimeswithscar #zombiecleo #my writing

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lowkeyrobin · 3 months

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Wholesome sibling antics with cricket crew? Like them getting reader on video/streams alot to play games (actual siblings) or maybe reader is a streamer and is very close with them, making people think you're siblings!

— 🦈 anon

oooo okay okay! I see the vision mwhahahahah ; and welcome to the family 🦈 anon! thanks for joining us :)

HANDSOME BROS ; sibling antics

includes ; tommyinnit, tubbo, ranboo & badlinu

warnings ; language, talk/jokes of killing, use of sibling!reader but can easily be skipped over/offered alternatives

masterlist

TOMMYINNIT

siblinginnit goes crazy (if you're adopted or not/you're just that tight with him that you're basically siblings. I'm being inclusive I swear 😭🙏 maybe you just have different dads who knows)

you're also a streamer 💀💀

lots of fans came from your brothers' rise in fame, but most of them actually see you for your own person and not just Tommy's sibling

(or tommy's very close friend if you don't wanna imagine you're related that's totally cool)

you stream pretty frequently together

lots of your streams feature Molly because you gossip and make crafts together and shit

when you're streaming with Tommy, the yelling at playful fighting never ends

jack, freddie, tubbo & molly act as your peacemakers LMAO

board game streams once a month so you can gossip and shit

people making fanart of you two >>>

"siblinginnits 🔛🔝"

("I wish they were real siblings so they could share horror stories of each other growing up 💀💀")

vlogs go crazy when you're there istg

at least 3 mins of each video is you two just bickering and barking over dumb shit

TUBBO

"are tubbo and y/u/n siblings?"

"no but they act like it"

if he's not streaming for tubbathon or on the qsmp bc he's a suffering addict, he's probably making videos or streaming with you

you just have that clear dynamic that even tho you're not related, you're found family in every universe

late night board game streams >>>

or chill mc smp streams where you two just argue over what to use and complain about each others builds LMAO

you arguing with him that he needs to eat real food

him arguing back saying you should help him then

you made your qsmp selves be twins so...

somehow you're worse than cellbit & bagi

usually tubbo doesn't have sunny around to see but you guys are so violent to one another 💀

"wdym siblings don't threaten to kill one another?"

"my brother in christ"

but then comes the amazing fanart and fanworks 🙏🙏

sibling duo for the win

RANBOO

you're just that cool and tight with him yk

the fact that you're credited in the end of genloss s1 as creative writer 372828 or something, people started speculating maybe you were siblings??

you really don't look alike at all but alright chat

but yeah, you're very close and tend to talk/stream/record a lot together

you make a whole vlog channel and it's mostly you two going on adventures and stuff

helping them out with the rebrand too

you'll often play games together all night and half the stream is just you guys fighting over the best yogurt flavor

"Ran, I will come to your house and beat you up"

"I'm just saying I think I'm in the right here"

charlie and sneeg are like your uncles

the peacemaker uncles because there's no way you can be out in public without causing a scene 💀

you guys take .5s of each other EVERYWHERE

your insta stories are just spam .5s 💀🙏🙏

and dumbass roasts of each other

the fanart is cool tho, often they dress you guys in "I love my sibling" shirts LMFAO

FREDDIE BADLINU

you're actually adopted (much like Tommy /j)

but obviously, with Freddie comes the pain of him not getting your charger downstairs for you

LMAO but fr, uno and monopoly streams are very normal

lots of trying each others wardrobes out as well

hackett siblings fanart (as little as there is) goes hard

you guys do a little soldier march whenever Tommy mentions America, and he notices but doesn't connect it for a solid 3 months 💀

average sibling pranks as well, considering you're so close in age

your main victims are usually ranboo, tommy, and jack

djing with tubbo>>>> making bangers up in here

the amount of .5s you have of each other is worrying

you're both too lazy to delete them so you have the ugliest pictures of each other 💀💀

"my brothers leaving to go on a tour. what do I do to prank him when he gets back?"

"y/n this isn't the private account"

"damnit"

#lowkeyrobin #mcyt x reader #mcyt preferences #mcyt oneshot #tommyinnit x reader #ranboo x reader #badlinu x reader #tubbo x reader #freddie badlinu x reader #cricket crew #cricket crew x reader #gn reader #gender neutral reader #they/them reader

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ipostwhatiwant1202 · 3 months

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Being Their Friend Headcanons:

• you don't like someone? collectively, the guys don't like them either (even though they never met them, they all have beef with your 80 year old aunt susan)

• if you're a girl and you got your period while you're with them, expect mild panicking from raph and/or mikey cause how are you not dying??? (once it's explained, expect princess treatment)

• game night and movie nights on the weekends. monopoly is banned

• head pats and hair ruffles all. the. time.

• if you're short (under 5'5) expect to be the designated forearm rest

• if you wear makeup, expect lots of questions, like how does the eyelash device not pinch your eye?? and why can you remove your eyelashes???

• sleepovers are a thing and it will be a huge fight on who's bed you're gonna sleep in (spoiler: you always end up on the couch with mikey clonked out on the recliner)

• self defense training cause obviously

• leo tries his best not to parent you, but does it unintentionally. you're comfortable enough to call him out and he appreciates it. you end up parenting the guys together...a lot.

• mikey is your go to fun and cuddle buddy. it's not uncommon for you two to be seen playing video games or curled up watching some cartoon on the couch

• donnie and you bond over tv shows and you tend to gossip with him quite a bit. his sleep schedule is all messed up, so if you want to cause trouble at 2 am, he's definitely your guy

• raph is the brother you never wanted but always needed. very loyal but he can and will call you out on your bs. playful banter and stupid nicknames are strong.

• lord help you if you're sick/hurt and you say nothing. they will r i o t

• you cook for them (or bake...or bring them snacks if you do neither) all the time

• leo likes to have tea with you in the morning when you sleep over cause you're not a morning person so you keep quiet

• raph can and will bench press you randomly. you're reading? not anymore, you're now being used as a weight

• you want to find out if the girl who bullied you in elementary school is pregnant with her step dad's baby? donnie's on it

• you need a hug or someone to let you vent? mikey will get all the snacks and drinks galore, he's all yours until you feel better

• you make them watch the eras tour movie and you were shocked to know they all knew the words???

• splinter just kind of adopted you and you're now his child. congrats! you don't have to do the hashi, but instead have to do the guys' laundry when you act up

• they kiss your head all the time

• annoying little shits when you're mad..they'll tighten all the jars so you have no choice but to talk to them..or put everything on the top shelf

• you're a girl? congrats! the guys are now all hardcore feminists for you and april both

• you're in the lgbtq+ community? cool! you now have four attack dogs protecting you

• oh you're on horomone treatments or transitioning? leo reminds you take your supplements, raph will help you buff up if you want, donnie is making sure your transition is going smooth, and mikey is your number 1 hype man

• it's not uncommon to find one of them passed out on your couch

• it's also not uncommon to find them all in your apartment eating take out when you get home from work

• you suffer from a mental illness such as depression, anxiety, bipolar, etc? prepare to have 4 mother hens watching you closely at all times

• 'i love yous' are not uncommon

• overall, they would make the coolest and bestest friends

#rise of the tmnt #tmnt 2012 #tmnt ask blog #tmnt bayverse #tmnt donatello #tmnt leonardo #tmnt michelangelo #tmnt raphael #ask blog #tmnt 2003 #tmnt imagine #tmnt headcanons

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bridgertonbabe · 6 months

Note

I love your bridgerton siblings support group chat.

What would be in the group chat the morning after the families Monopoly night ended in a screaming match with several death threats?

BSSG Group Chat

Sophie:

Lucy:

Phillip:

Michael: Well at least we got the game night out of the way for this year 🙃

Penelope: and thanks to last night we can dissuade them from having one for another couple of years

Penelope: I hope 🙏

Kate: Wait what?

Kate: Are you serious?

Kate: Last night wasn't that bad!

Gareth:

Lucy: I...

Sophie: Kate

Sophie: Sweetie

Simon:

Sophie: In what world was last night not that bad????

Kate: Oh you guys are being so dramatic!

Penelope: Kate

Penelope: you do understand that a trip to a+e is the epitome of a bad night

Penelope: right?

Penelope: please tell me you get that

Kate: Yeah but it was only the one casualty this time!

Kate: So it was a way better night than the Cluedo incident of '19

Lucy: i'm sorry

Lucy: THIS ISN'T THE FIRST TIME A GAMES NIGHT HAS ENDED IN A TRIP TO A&E???????????????

Michael: Ah Lucy

Michael: So young

Michael: So innocent

Michael: So pure of heart

Sophie: Wow I had forgotten all about the Cluedo incident. I genuinely think I had repressed it.

Phillip: Lucky you.

Phillip: Btw Simon how much was the vase that El broke? I'll Venmo you.

Simon: Honestly Phil don't stress about it.

Simon: I hated that vase anyway.

Phillip: Are you sure?

Simon: Yeah and besides Daph's never gonna learn otherwise that this is always going to happen when she decides to host game night.

Gareth: also apologies about hy

Gareth: i wasn't aware she would bring her penknife to a fucking games night

Gareth: but more fool me

Penelope: Gareth we can't control our spouses

Michael: No matter how much we'd like to.

Penelope: So don't beat yourself up about it x

Lucy: so none of you are going to expand on what happened with Cluedo?????

Lucy: just how many people had to go to a&e that night?????

Lucy: how long into the night did it all descend into chaos????????

Lucy: why would any of you allow a games night to happen again after that???????????????????????????

Sophie: Lucy, were you under the impression that any of us wanted to be there last night?

Kate: I wanted to be there!

Michael: Community note: Kate suffers from a mental illness which only flares up in competitive circumstances.

Kate: Fuck off Michael!

Lucy: well at the very least you guys could have warned me about it!!!

Gareth: i did warn you about it

Lucy: gareth sending me this

Lucy:

Lucy: is not warning me about it

Gareth:

Gareth: i-

Gareth: please tell me you get the reference?

Gareth: if this is the way i find out you have never seen the film

Lucy: relax i know it's get out

Lucy: i understood

Lucy: i just thought you sent it as a joke because of how family game nights can be in general

Lucy: you never specified the severity of a bridgerton game night

Gareth: see for me sending you the pic was a warning about the severity of a bridgerton game night

Penelope: Also Gareth's warning aside, I did tell you to brace yourself when you arrived last night.

Lucy: again i thought you guys were joking

Michael: Did you miss Phil catatonic in the corner before the monopoly board had even been set up?

Michael: Or the fact Simon was half-cut from pre-gaming?

Sophie: Or the mad glint in each of the Bridgertons' eyes?

Lucy: ok fine

Lucy: perhaps i willfully ignored all the warning signs

Lucy: i was naive

Simon: Look don't stress Lucy, we've all been there.

Phillip: Yeah at some point we were all young and naive about game nights before we met the bridgertons

Michael: Not Kate tho

Kate: Fuck off, I'm not that bad!

Simon: ...

Simon: Kate I know it was you who keyed my car last night.

Gareth:

Lucy:

Phillip:

Michael: Fucking hell Kate

Kate: What

Kate: Simon

Kate: No

Kate: That wasn't me!

Simon: Multiple people saw you.

Kate: Like who?

Sophie: Me

Kate: Sophie you're mistaken

Sophie: I can assure you I'm not

Kate: No, you're mistaken. Besides you were too busy crying last night to see things properly, the tears must have distorted your vision.

Penelope: I also saw you.

Penelope: You were not discreet.

Kate: Pen I have no idea what you're talking about.

Phillip: Not Kate in her gaslight era

Simon sent a video

Gareth: ayyy lmao talk your way out of that one

Kate: You filmed me???

Kate: While somebody was getting loaded into an ambulance???

Sophie: Bitch you were keying a car while somebody was being loaded into the ambulance!!!!!!!!!!

Michael: Wow now you've gone and done it

Michael: Provoking Sophie into using bitch

Kate: Instead of filming me why didn't you just stop me???

Simon: I wasn't the one filming you.

Simon: Amelia was.

Gareth:

Michael: welp

Penelope: 😬

Kate: Ok look I'm really sorry, that was really out of line of me to key your Audi, I took things too far, especially when it was your car and not Daphne's.

Kate: But in my defence

Simon has left the chat.

Sophie has removed Kate from the chat.

Sophie has added Simon to the chat.

Sophie: Don't worry I removed her.

Simon: Thanks Soph x

Sophie: I'll leave her in time out for a couple of days and then add her back.

Michael: She never learns.

Lucy: ...

Lucy: are you telling me kate's been removed from the gc because of game nights before????

Phillip:

#asks #bridgerton spouses #group chat au

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northforthcrow · 4 months

Text

Random ideas

•Encanto x DreamWorks Trolls

John Dory being forced to listen to Surface Pressure. I wanna see him cry.

Bruce and Clay listening to What Else Can I Do

Forcing Peppy to listen to Two Oruguitas. Make him suffer.

We don't talk about Branch.

•Kismet and Branch

Playing Uno

Playing Monopoly

Playing Among Us

The Holy Trio Games of Patience,Pain and Betrayal. If there's fics of these with Branch included,please recommend.

Muse Kismet and MegaraBranch singing I won't say I'm in love

An idea that won't let me rest is

Penguins of Madagascar gets transported into the Trolls universe without a way to immediately go back. The utter hilarity and chaos of it all.

I can easily see Rico getting along with the rock trolls and the regenade trolls.

Private with the pop and kpop trolls.

Kowalski would either be enthralled with funks technology or get along well with the classical trolls. Both could work.

Skipper would undoubtedly not be having a good time. I can see him with the putt putt trolls tho but would get on Clays nerves resulting in both of them being nemesis trying to one up another.

On another note do Penguins exist in the Trolls universe?

#trolls branch #dreamworks trolls #john dory #trolls clay #trolls bruce #trolls kismet #the last one's the reason I made this in the first place.

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crypticpine · 2 years

Text

Spoilers for The Owl House season 3 episode 1 ahead:

I'm so mad. I'm so, incredibly mad.

There is only one episode out right now, and I'm already pissed. You can see where they were going to build up to the Belos thing, you can see so much of what they wanted to do in the beginning but had to cut because Disney wants Dana Terrace to suffer and the fans suffer. I'm so pissed because this show is so good, but Disney snuffed the light and had to make them cut the beautiful story into shreds because they wouldn't allow them a full season. Because they hate representation that much, that they would risk money on a series so popular, so loved by fans that I have no doubt they could wring the series for all the money in the world and we wouldn't care (much) because it's such a good series. No, they can't do that, something they've been known to do and have done multiple times. They can't see the monopoly they could possibly make through this series. Why? Because two girls are in a relationship. Because there is LGBT representation. I'm so mad that we couldn't see the months pass by, see Willow and Hunter maybe flirt, see the scene where Luz comes out to her mom with Amity, I want to see Gus gush more about human stuff. I wanted flapjack and Hunter to hang out more, gosh I wanted flapjacks death to hurt more. I cried, I was so upset but everything happened so fast, I immediately stopped thinking of Flapjack. I don't know if that's the needed effect, showing how much more happens in this show if it starts with the death of a beloved character, but I wished things were slower. I wish we were able to see the full breakdown and lead up to Hunters hair with willow. I wish we were able to see a scene with them talking about things, I wish I was able to see more of Luz's school and those kids that apparently admired her.

I want to make this clear that I'm not blaming Dana or any of the people creating this show. They are doing such a good job, and I give them my love and support that they managed to have such Major representation in a Disney show. I'm blaming Disney for not giving them enough time for everything. And I hope that inspite of that, their ideas live In fanfiction and fan comics. I want to see hunter struggle with the fact that Belos is inside him. I want to see lumity hanging out. I want to see Camila being the best mom she is. I want to see Vee being the best friend to everyone, specifically Hunter because they both have nothing in the demon world. I love this show, I want more and more of these characters. This is the first episode. I'm both excited and mortified for the 2 more "44-minute specials" that Disney carelessly threw at us. Gosh, that was only 46 minutes? Only about an hour 30 min for the whole season? Screw you, Disney. Stop making marvel movies and shows.

#the Owl House #the owl house spoilers #the owl house season three spoilers #the owl house season 3 #toh #toh spoilers #toh season three #toh season 3 spoilers #pine posting #toh thoughts #dana terrace #disney #sorry i'm ranting

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sleepy-the-loz-enthusiast · 1 month

Note

Hey' I'm the one who sent the ask about modern au Four. It's fine that you lost the ask. I'm just excited for the you to share stuff about Four.

Aaaaaaa you're too kind thank you-

Here's the Four stuff you've been promised !!!

Just to preface, Four does not have DID or any similar conditions, just for the reason that I don't know enough about it to be able to potray it in a respectful and accurate way. If you do imagine Four with DID, that's valid, but they aren't here.

However, Four does categorise their thoughts into four categories-

Red: red represents emotional intelligence, compassion, and empathy

Blue: blue represents passion, protectiveness, and fury

Green: green represents loyalty, courage, and leadership

Violet: vio represents intelligence, knowledge, and dedication

Four just finds it easier to deal with conflicting thoughts by giving them names to better identify how they're feeling.

Anyways

Four is 15 in this au, though mistaken for much younger. He used to date a mysterious guy who called himself Shadow, but he went missing without a proper goodbye. Four's determined to find the cause of it, and so has developed an unhealthy addiction to true crime podcasts and researching similar macabre things. However on a different note, they also love fairytales and researching old folk stories. They pull a lot of allnighters... and have suffered a few broken toes for it.

Speaking of, Four lives with his Grandfather in a forge. After their father died at war and mother died in childbirth, Four's very close with his Grandfather and often helps out in the forge. Don't be fooled by their height or age; this fella's got biceps for days and is a very proficient blacksmith. He helps his Grandfather make weaponry for the Royal Family.

Four's also best friends with Dot since childhood !!

They have chronic migraines and hate it. Like, to the point where at worst he will be knocked out for days at a time, only waking up to eat, drink, and use the bathroom. They like to hide in the basement when this happens, I know there's nothing in canon about a basement but creative liberties?? because it's quiet, dark, and he doesn't need to move much. Their Grandfather's gotten pretty good at playing nurse while also working. At best it doesn't come to that, and Four's just heavily fatigued for a day and hates being around people. Oh, and he's developed a strong tolerance for most painkillers, rendering them ineffective. Poor guy.

Four's good friends with Wild, Legend, Hyrule, and Ravio at school, despite them being a year older. He's also friends with Wind and acts as a scary older brother figure to ward off anyone who tries messing with him. Despite the fact that Wind is taller and very capable of standing up for himself.

Four's also incredibly smart and fairly athletic, so they're pretty popular with students and teachers alike. People joke about them being able to read minds, but in truth Four's just observant and quick to make connections. He's won the school many prizes for maths and science. Buut Four's attendance isn't the greatest thing ever, and at least where I'm from teachers are kinda assholes about that. At least his grades and general attitude make up for it.

Four and Ravio have gotten into a physical fight over Monopoly before.

Aaaand with that, ramble over !

Thank you for the ask and I hope you liked reading this, have a great existence !!!!

#tloz #lu #linked universe #modern au #rambles #lu four #more exposition yay

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batstorm93672 · 2 years

Text

Dick: Alright! Siblings game night!

Stephanie: Wohoo!

Tim: What games?

Dick: I was thinking of something from the closet instead of video games for now

Jason: There's Monopoly

Tim: I am not playing that with you

Jason: Why not?

Tim: You landed on my square and then when I said you have to give me money, you pulled out a gun to my face and said "I'd rather face death then give any sort of money to you"

Jason: *shrugs* You were in jail, not giving money to some scum

Damian: ...I have a suggestion

Dick: Does it involve violence?

Damian: No

Dick: *genuinely surprised* Oh wow, okay go ahead

Damian: We should contort the human body in ways they can not imagine. Letting fate decide their punishment upon the ground they walk. Letting them suffer greatly and feel as their own body fails every so often, upon failure they shall be eliminated in a fashion that would make the dead weep

Jason: *barely containing laughter*

Cassandra: *thumbs up*

Duke: *goes to Stephanie* I... I don't think I'm willing to play anymore

Tim: Someone needs to translate that

Dick: *sighs* He means, Twister. He suggests that we should play Twister

#dick grayson #stephanie brown #tim drake #jason todd #damian wayne #cassandra cain #duke thomas #fun for the whole family #sibilings game night!

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

Text

Podcasting "Microincentives and Enshittification"

Tomorrow (Oct 25) at 10hPT/18hUK, I'm livestreaming an event called "Seizing the Means of Computation" for the Edinburgh Futures Institute.

This week on my podcast, I read my recent Medium column, "Microincentives and Enshittification," about the way that monopoly drives mediocrity, with Google's declining quality as Exhibit A:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

It's not your imagination: Google used to be better – in every way. Search used to be better, sure, but Google used to be better as a company. It treated its workers better (for example, not laying off 12,000 workers months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years). It had its users' backs in policy fights – standing up for Net Neutrality and the right to use encryption to keep your private data private. Even when the company made ghastly mistakes, it repented of them and reversed them, like the time it pulled out of China after it learned that Chinese state hackers had broken into Gmail in order to discover which dissidents to round up and imprison.

None of this is to say that Google used to be perfect, or even, most of the time, good. Just that things got worse. To understand why, we have to think about how decisions get made in large organizations, or, more to the point, how arguments get resolved in these organizations.

We give Google a lot of shit for its "Don't Be Evil" motto, but it's worth thinking through what that meant for the organization's outcomes over the years. Through most of Google's history, the tech labor market was incredibly tight, and skilled engineers and other technical people had a lot of choice as to where they worked. "Don't Be Evil" motivated some – many – of those workers to take a job at Google, rather than one of its rivals.

Within Google, that meant that decisions that could colorably be accused of being "evil" would face some internal pushback. Imagine a product design meeting where one faction proposes something that is bad for users, but good for the company's bottom line. Think of another faction that says, "But if we do that, we'll be 'evil.'"

I think it's safe to assume that in any high-stakes version of this argument, the profit side will prevail over the don't be evil side. Money talks and bullshit walks. But what if there were also monetary costs to being evil? Like, what if Google has to worry about users or business customers defecting to a rival? Or what if there's a credible reason to worry that a regulator will fine Google, or Congress will slap around some executives at a televised hearing?

That lets the no-evil side field a more robust counterargument: "Doing that would be evil, and we'll lose money, or face a whopping fine, or suffer reputational harms." Even if these downsides are potentially smaller than the upsides, they still help the no-evil side win the argument. That's doubly true if the downsides could depress the company's share-price, because Googlers themselves are disproportionately likely to hold Google stock, since tech companies are able to get a discount on their wage-bills by paying employees in abundant stock they print for free, rather than the scarce dollars that only come through hard graft.

When the share-price is on the line, the counterargument goes, "That would be evil, we will lose money, and you will personally be much poorer as a result." Again, this isn't dispositive – it won't win every argument – but it is influential. A counterargument that braids together ideology, institutional imperatives, and personal material consequences is pretty robust.

Which is where monopoly comes in. When companies grow to dominate their industries, they are less subject to all forms of discipline. Monopolists don't have to worry about losing disgusted employees, because they exert so much gravity on the labor market that they find it easy to replace them.

They don't have to worry about losing customers, because they have eliminated credible alternatives. They don't have to worry about losing users, because rivals steer clear of their core business out of fear of being bigfooted through exclusive distribution deals, predatory pricing, etc. Investors have a name for the parts of the industry dominated by Big Tech: they call it "the kill zone" and they won't back companies seeking to enter it.

When companies dominate their industries, they find it easier to capture their regulators and outspend public prosecutors who hope to hold them to account. When they lose regulatory fights, they can fund endless appeals. If they lose those appeals, they can still afford the fines, especially if they can use an army of lawyers to make sure that the fine is less than the profit realized through the bad conduct. A fine is a price.

In other words, the more dominant a company is, the harder it is for the good people within the company to win arguments about unethical and harmful proposals, and the worse the company gets. The internal culture of the company changes, and its products and services decline, but meaningful alternatives remain scarce or nonexistent.

Back to Google. Google owns more than 90% of the search market. Google can't grow by adding more Search users. The 10% of non-Google searchers are extremely familiar with Google's actions. To switch to a rival search engine, they have had to take many affirmative, technically complex steps to override the defaults in their devices and tools. It's not like an ad extolling the virtues of Google Search will bring in new customers.

Having saturated the search market, Google can only increase its Search revenues by shifting value from searchers or web publishers to itself – that is, the only path to Search growth is enshittification. They have to make things worse for end users or business customers in order to make things better for themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

This means that each executive in the Search division is forever seeking out ways to shift value to Google and away from searchers and/or publishers. When they propose a enshittificatory tactic, Google's market dominance makes it easy for them to win arguments with their teammates: "this may make you feel ashamed for making our product worse, but it will not make me poorer, it will not make the company poorer, and it won't chase off business customers or end users, therefore, we're gonna do it. Fuck your feelings."

After all, each microenshittification represents only a single Jenga block removed from the gigantic tower that is Google Search. No big deal. Some Google exec made the call to make it easier for merchants to buy space overtop searches for their rivals. That's not necessarily a bad thing: "Thinking of taking a vacation in Florida? Why not try Puerto Rico – it's a US-based Caribbean vacation without the transphobia and racism!"

But this kind of advertising also opens up lots of avenues for fraud. Scammers clone local restaurants' websites, jack up their prices by 15%, take your order, and transmit it to the real restaurant, pocketing the 15%. They get clicks by using some of that rake to buy an ad based on searches for the restaurant's name, so they show up overtop of it and rip off inattentive users:

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

This is something Google could head off; they already verify local merchants by mailing them postcards with unique passwords that they key into a web-form. They could ban ads for websites that clone existing known merchants, but that would incur costs (engineer time) and reduce profits, both from scammers and from legit websites that trip a false positive.

The decision to sell this kind of ad, configured this way, is a direct shift of value from business customers (restaurants) and end-users (searchers) to Google. Not only that, but it's negative sum. The money Google gets from this tradeoff is less than the cost to both the restaurant (loss of goodwill from regulars who are affronted because of a sudden price rise) and searchers (who lose 15% on their dinner orders). This trade-off makes everyone except Google worse off, and it's only possible when Google is the only game in town.

It's also small potatoes. Last summer, scammers figured out how to switch out the toll-free numbers that Google displayed for every airline, redirecting people to boiler-rooms where con-artists collected their credit-card numbers and sensitive personal information (passports, etc):

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

Here again, we see a series of small compromises that lead to a massive harm. Google decided to show users 800 numbers rather than links to the airlines' websites, but failed to fortify the process for assigning phone numbers to prevent this absolutely foreseeable type of fraud. It's not that Google wanted to enable fraud – it's that they created the conditions for the fraud to occur and failed to devote the resources necessary to defend against it.

Each of these compromises indicates a belief among Google decision-makers that the consequences for making their product worse will be outweighed by the value the company will generate by exposing us to harm. One reason for this belief is on display in the DOJ's antitrust case against Google:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1328941/download

The case accuses Google of spending tens of billions of dollars to buy out the default search position on every platform where an internet user might conceivably perform a search. The company is lighting multiple Twitters worth of dollars on fire to keep you from ever trying another search engine.

Spraying all those dollars around doesn't just keep you from discovering a better search engine – it also prevents investors from funding that search engine in the first place. Why fund a startup in the kill-zone if no one will ever discover that it exists?

https://www.theverge.com/23802382/search-engine-google-neeva-android

Of course, Google doesn't have to grow Search to grow its revenue. Hypothetically, Google could pursue new lines of business and grow that way. This is a tried-and-true strategy for tech giants: Apple figured out how to outsource its manufacturing to the Pacific Rim; Amazon created a cloud service, Microsoft figured out how to transform itself into a cloud business.

Look hard at these success stories and you discover another reason that Google – and other large companies – struggle to grow by moving into adjacent lines of business. In each case – Apple, Microsoft, Amazon – the exec who led the charge into the new line of business became the company's next CEO.

In other words: if you are an exec at a large firm and one of your rivals successfully expands the business into a new line, they become the CEO – and you don't. That ripples out within the whole org-chart: every VP who becomes an SVP, every SVP who becomes an EVP, and every EVP who becomes a president occupies a scarce spot that it worth millions of dollars to the people who lost it.

The one thing that execs reliably collaborate on is knifing their ambitious rivals in the back. They may not agree on much, but they all agree that that guy shouldn't be in charge of this lucrative new line of business.

This "curse of bigness" is why major shifts in big companies are often attended by the return of the founder – think of Gates going back to Microsoft or Brin returning to Google to oversee their AI projects. They are the only execs that other execs can't knife in the back.

This is the real "innovator's dilemma." The internal politics of large companies make Machiavelli look like an optimist.

When your company attains a certain scale, any exec's most important rival isn't the company's competitor – it's other execs at the same company. Their success is your failure, and vice-versa.

This makes the business of removing Jenga blocks from products like Search even more fraught. These quality-degrading, profit-goosing tactics aren't coordinated among the business's princelings. When you're eating your seed-corn, you do so in private. This secrecy means that it's hard for different product-degradation strategists to realize that they are removing safeguards that someone else is relying on, or that they're adding stress to a safety measure that someone else just doubled the load on.

It's not just Google, either. All of tech is undergoing a Great Enshittening, and that's due to how intertwined all these tech companies. Think of how Google shifts value from app makers to itself, with a 30% rake on every dollar spent in an app. Google is half of the mobile duopoly, with the other half owned by Apple. But they're not competitors – they're co-managers of a cartel. The single largest deal that Google or Apple does every year is the bribe Google pays Apple to be the default search for iOS and Safari – $15-20b, every year.

If Apple and Google were mobile competitors, you'd expect them to differentiate their products, but instead, they've converged – both Apple and Google charge sky-high 30% payment processing fees to app makers.

Same goes for Google/Facebook, the adtech duopoly: not only do both companies charge advertisers and publishers sky-high commissions, clawing 51 cents out of every ad dollar, but they also illegally colluded to rig the market and pay themselves more, at advertisers' and publishers' expense:

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

It's not just tech, either – every sector from athletic shoes to international sea-freight is concentrated into anti-competitive, value-annihilating cartels and monopolies:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

As our friends on the right are forever reminding us: "incentives matter." When a company runs out of lands to conquer, the incentives all run one direction: downhill, into a pit of enshittification. Google got worse, not because the people in it are worse (or better) than they were before – but because the constraints that discipline the company and contain its worst impulses got weaker as the company got bigger.

Here's the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2023/10/23/microincentives-and-enshittification/

And here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_452/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_452_-_Microincentives_and_Enshittification.mp3

And here's my podcast's RSS feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

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/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

#pluralistic #podcasts #enshittification #google #microincentives #monopoly #incentives matter #trustbusting #the curse of bigness

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