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diluclover300 · 2 months

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Just One Week (7)

Gojo Satoru x Female Reader

also posted on my ao3 account: diluclover300

CHAPTER INDEX:

I H8 U

My Kinda Fun

Balance

{S] Awake

Eggs and Rice

Wait, but I'm broke

Couple's Discount

CHAPTER 7: Couple's Discount

...

Satoru is beyond ecstatic, his vision sticky and gooey at the insane amount of silks and wools carefully hung and displayed. There's a catalog of clothes, an array of expensive clothes. Top-tier luxury brands, ones you'd catch celebrities sporting like a pair of pajamas at the local airport. Ones that he can caress between the delicate friction of his fingers as a warm smile spreads across his face like butter on toast. Oh, how lucky he is.

To reunite with his long-lost friend, whom he spent years tracking down, whom he was able to convince into allowing this moment to blossom into reality. He feels like a kid in a candy store, ogling at each piece of fabric, at each suit jacket and pant. And how tempting the sight is, how it tempts him to envelope himself in pure greed like a creature of sin.

The assortment of colors, the breathtaking pigments, the unique textures of each cloth...

The excitement is so wonderful, so captivating that he doesn't even begin to notice the woman greeting him at the door. He takes off like a rocket ship, roaming around the men's section. A maze that he hasn't ventured in, yet one that feels familiar and natural to navigate through pure instinct.

This must be heaven.

"I think he, uh... I'm so sorry if he causes trouble." You half-groan, head threatening to hang low at Gojo's energetic aura. "Thank you."

The woman nods, a typical response that you'd expect from someone working customer service. You've been in that position before, squeezing out an exhausted smile at something you had no idea how to respond to. Funny enough, your cheeks sting from the muscle memory.

You think to apologize once more, but you refrain, biting your tongue as you dejectedly follow after Gojo. He buries his head in a ring of hung-up clothes, swiping through each shirt like a potential match on Tinder.

"Oh? Do you frequent here often?"

You turn back, confusion overcoming your face.

"No, I've never been, actually." You slowly shake your head, examining the woman for a moment. "Why?"

That low bun of hers wrapped in a red scarf, and that sleek, white uniform doesn't ring a bell. Does she know you?

"Oh, sorry, it's just that your jacket... I couldn't help but notice that it is from our brand."

"Oh," You smile, the interaction as awkward as awkward gets. "That's weird, I never noticed."

You walk away with an understanding nod, fumbling with your lips as you fidget with the black jacket lying in the crook of your arm. Now that you think about it, it does feel like silk, expensive silk at that.

Maybe your memories have faded over the years. It's possible that you snagged this from another one of those annual holiday sales, sort of a bad habit you've accumulated. You always browsed for coats and blazers when no one was around to watch, hunching over that compact cubicle as you frantically refreshed your search engine. Occasionally, when someone would walk past or start conversation, you almost let out a guilty flinch out of fear for getting caught. Almost.

Nonetheless, the suggestion doesn't strike you. There's not a single instance where you, the loyal slave to some measly corporation, could justify the selfish purchase of a fancy coat. A coat was a coat, no matter the price. It would have torn up in that monster of a washing machine you own either. Not to mention the void and guilt that would stem from such an unnecessary purchase.

"Is that my jacket?" Weird. You don't expect it, but you recall the events from this morning. The skeptical look on his rather punchable face.

Your fingers trace over the sewn-in label, mumbling the brand to yourself. Even that leaves a pretentious, bitter taste on your tongue.

Nope, it doesn't ring a bell.

You suppose it's French, and to be honest, you don't have an opinion on the French. There are far more significant matters, at least in your opinion, than some species of European folk. Why would you spend your precious paycheck on such a useless thing?

Everything tells you, everything desperately grasps you by the shoulders and shakes you to your senses. And then you finally uncover the answer as to whether or not you "frequented" such a snobby, stuck-up place.

"I must be remembering things wrong.." Yeah, remembering things wrong, my ass, you think.

He lied. Oh dear, you really tried to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And that certain white-haired culprit is currently nowhere to be seen. Quite frankly, you have no idea where you are either. You've lost yourself in the garden of consumerism, swarmed by the amount of clothes and designer bags laying in front of you. A landfill for the rich, you call it.

But it's peaceful for a bit as it is overwhelming. You're oddly calm when you take in the privilege of Gojo's absence, as if a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. A heavy one at that.

Five years was, and is too short, much too measly of a distance. If you had it your way, if the Earth rotated to the drumming of your feet, then you would have never known the words "Gojo Satoru". His face would have been an imaginative blur, those eyes nothing but a mere gaze, and those memories would become one of the infinite "what-ifs" of this universe.

And if you ran into him on a fateful spring day?

You would have abandoned destiny a long time ago, parted ways like ex-lovers. The occurrence would leave you as you were.

Still, steady, and normal.

These three values would have stuck with you, through thick and thin. But which one was it? You don't know what to call this incident. Was this the thick? Or was this the thin?

You wonder, mull over it for a bit before you're chained back into the prison of his presence. It's a game of push and pull.

This punishment of a game.

"Yo! Over here, Y/N." You look up from the leather jacket folded on the display shelf below you, eyes hooked onto that raised hand of his.

You seem to be on the receiving end, on both sides of that hellish spectrum.

"Okay." You make your way over to "here", that sigh of yours halted. You have something to ask him anyways, something about that jacket of his.

His hand is still held up high in the air while the rest of his body entangled in a rack of clothes. Stupid is as stupid does.

His and Hers, You regrettably read and fully understand the sign hanging overhead from the ceiling, along with the bolded words: NEW Spring Collection.

"Did you find something?" You only ask as a precaution, monitoring his spending habits. An awful habit that solely relied on you and you only for support.

That hand of his flails around before sinking down into the sea of clothes before him.

"You're here?" His hands scour and fish into the abyss, voice muffled into the ridiculous amount of suits and dresses stuffed in his face. "I'm surprised-"

A groan follows, the sound of plastic material ringing against his skull. A sound that you would have ignored because it seamlessly blended into the rapid snare of the radio-pop tune playing on the store's speakers. You could have paid it zero mind if not for the sheer amount of second-hand embarrassment that ensued from your witness of the scene.

"Careful there," You sneer, watching as his back contorts like a gymnast. "The higher-ups wouldn't want you to come back a complete moron."

Satoru chuckles, scrambling once more before putting an end to his short-lived visit to Narnia.

"I'm thankful for the concern." There's an array of clothes folded over his arm, and oh, does the sight worry. "Please continue to take great care of me, Y/N."

You give him a strange look, your lips curling in disgust. By no means were you concerned about him, worried about this bafoon of a man.

"You're dumb." It's a conclusion you should have come to earlier, really.

"Remind me," Satoru's gaze trails off into the air before landing on you. "Who was the one that lost to me last night?"

You're stumped, mouth opening before it shuts again. That unlucky "who" was you, the loser.

Gojo takes your defeat as an opening, a chance.

"Wanna try this on?" A dress is shoved into your face, along with that cheeky smile of his that peeks behind the cloth.

Your attention darts from Gojo to the pink, girlish dress.

The long-sleeves are puffed just by the slightest bit, and the material a bit translucent until you notice that there (thankfully) is a white cloth underneath to keep yourself covered. Your eyesight was just playing tricks on you. Okay, a bit of decency, you appreciate it. However, you think the skirt is just a little too short, but the sweetheart neckline does look kind of gorgeous, you'll admit.

"Whaddya think?" He reveals more of that hidden smile of his behind the blinding cloth, along with his now enlarged starry eyes. You don't take that as a good sign, it's more of warning. "Hm?"

Emotionally, you don't exactly feel inclined to wear it, nor does the idea entice you. Logically, you can't and don't want to afford a dress you could easily get for way cheaper on the internet. Besides, you'd rather focus on controlling the inevitable loss of your sweet, hard-earned cash if possible. And with the sleek look of the fabric, along with the carefully stitched in details - the item is nothing but a pure fantasy.

You intend to keep it that way.

"No-"

Again.

Again, again, and again! Satoru groans out of pure annoyance. You're using that word again. That boring word, the word which cages him in like a helpless bird, the word which is so draining, so terribly cruel, absolutely inhumane.

No.

How he resents the very existence, the very creation of that word. That word which rolls of your tongue without an ounce of hesitation.

"No?" Satoru interrupts, raising a brow before yanking off his glasses.

"Um.."

When you look into those eyes laced with the pure malice of the devil, your flesh tenses. Your muscles contract, a reaction not one of muscle memory, but one of cold-blooded fear.

"I, um..." Think, think, think! You can't seem to put two and two together no matter how much your brain tells you to.

When his eyes release a frosty residue into the air, when you watch the air melt against him, you lose your resolve. Stripped of it, left with the stubbornness lying underneath.

Telling Gojo Satoru "yes" - you'd rather lie cold in your grave.

"Is it still a no?"

No doubt about it, Satoru notices. Your stubbornness surprisingly (as if he hasn't calculated this reaction) clashes with his want.

Without a single word, you begrudgingly snatch the dress out of his loose grasp, eyes searching around for the dressing room as you turn on your heel, slumping with each step like a deflated skydancer.

"To your left." Satoru directs, burying the self-conceited excitement down his throat. "You're welcome."

Patience is a virtue, he repeats to himself, over and over as you disappear behind the racks of clothes in front of him.

...

You don't want to.

Oh, you really can't stand the look of it because the feeling this dress evokes in you is criminal. The definition of bi-polar, heck, even multi-polar as the fabric drapes around you.

A part of you, the mature side of you, loathes the sight. You feel girlish, frail, and overly-feminine, like a total joke of a woman. You gaze upon the mirror and shy from it, covering your eyes before you peek through your fingers out of pure embarrassment.

You were well-into your twenties at this point, a young age, but still... weren't you a little too old for this? You can't help but feel that way. With those bags underneath your eyes you look like a princess fresh out of a zombie apocalypse, not some cute, innocent-looking chick. Maybe you look a little fucked-up, honestly. Completely out of place.

Oh, whatever. You lightly squeeze and pick at the skirt, tracing the pleated lines.

There's another part of you as well, and you suppose it's your immature side. The side that pokes through your doubts like a roses' thorn.

It's pretty. You feel kind of special, like an actual princess or some kind of tacky, knock-off Barbie doll. Fluffing your hair, a pit forms in the bottom-left of your stomach, plague pooling up inside of you.

Envy, desire, selfishness begin to settle in. And to think that you strayed, parted ways with these three "friends" years ago. Only now do they make their grand reappearance.

So this is what it's like to be normal, isn't it? You ask yourself, only to receive no answer. Surely, this is what it's like to have the world at your fingertips, to have all your wants and desires served to you in silver platter, right?

You should be jumping up and down right now, squealing like a damn schoolgirl at the idea that you were living out a childhood fantasy of yours.

"It's nice," You mumble, almost as if you're trying to convince yourself to agree. The words don't stick as well as you hoped.

You're jealous, almost angry you've never got to experience something so trivial, so materialistic. Jujutsu training took up more than half of your youth and those high-school memories you so deeply craved only remained a simple dream. A selfish goal you could never achieve no matter which plan or path you took to get there. The consequences of your choices would always haunt you, and you suppose this is one of those instances when you see the faintest image of a little girl. A little girl with a pair of eyes all too similar, with a nose much like yours, with lips of the same nature.

You want to scream when your chest compresses against itself, eyes stinging and reddening.

How tormenting, you would have never imagined your reflection to be one of a burden as your fingers still against the fabric of that dress, lips rolling over each other as a ship sinks to the very bottom of your stomach's oceans.

You remember. You remember it all too well, those years in elementary school. One question stuck with you in particular.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

To first-grade you, that was a simple, easy question. So you churned out an answer with very little thought.

"I want to be happy! Like... forever?"

Hah. Simple.

You think, no, you thought that such a simple, inoffensive wish would allow your life to show you a bit of grace, a bit of fulfillment. You were wrong, damn it, you were so wrong that you let out a choked, cowardly sniffle. The little you wouldn't even want to see you face, she'd rather die than accept her reality-

"Yoo-hoo. It's been ten minutes, you done yet?"

You flinch at his voice, blinking profusely as you touch up your watering eyes. Being sad was one thing, but you were not going to cry around Gojo Satoru. Never.

"Hello-"

You swing the door open, feeling your eyelashes water before you speak. The sound of your voice is stupid as all can be, but what could you do? You were just crying to yourself like the main character in some cheaply-produced Disney movie.

"Hi." You frown, crossing your arms as you feel the wind blow against your bare legs. You don't even want to look at him right now. Why? He's not scary.

It's a silence so thick that follows, so thick that you can't even take in proper breaths from the air that lies between the two of you.

Gojo Satoru stares, and you hate it. You hate that equally thick stare lying behind those glasses of his, seriously. You want to hide away, crawl into a hole when he hums like that, sucking in his lips as he examines you like a zoo animal. You're going ballistic and all you can do is stand there with your arms crossed as a defense. It's insulting because you're aware of how ridiculous the thing looks on you. Insulting because he makes it so obvious that you look like a little girl playing dress-up.

"What?" You say, tone flat. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Oops. He swallows, guilty as charged when he stiffly rubs his neck. Satoru feels like a perv, the memories of that night flooding into the dam of his mind.

No, you're a friend.

Just a friend.

Only a beloved childhood friend of his, so there's no reason that these troublesome fireworks should be going off, bouncing off the barriers of his skin.

"Like what?" He looks away, hands stuffed in his pocket as he occupies his mind with the displays surrounding him. "I wasn't doing a single thing except looking at the dress."

Your lips tremble, and you feel dumb. Super dumb. Maybe it's those leftover feelings from earlier that begin to explode out of you, little by little. You can't seem to stop it, and it's killing you as your armor cracks.

"Is it that bad?" Your voice cracks, and he begins to panic as if he wasn't a nervous wreck before. "Be honest."

"What? Of course it isn't-"

"Stop lying." You let out, eyes burning up into ashes as they redden like cherries. "I mean it."

"Why would I lie? You- you look pretty." Damn it. He's let the cat out of the bag, fingers covering his lips before he decides to just accept his terrible fate.

No, that wasn't- that wasn't what you wanted to hear. You toy with the flesh in your mouth, the skin of your forehead scrunching and bunching up.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no... You shouldn't be mad at him, he was just looking at the dress, he wasn't judging you, you just made him call you pretty. Wait, you're pretty?

You ignore that, your skin crawls at the compliment. You hate it, you hate him, everything about him.

Your eyes are - Ugh. What are you doing?

"Well, it was just because... because.." You stammer, fiddling with the syllables of your words as the image of that particular black jacket appears in your mind.

"Because?" Satoru questions, taking in a deep breath. He feels strange when your eyes swell up like that, so strange that he can't put it into words even if he tried.

"Are you crying?" He doesn't know if he should ask, and he's especially scared of sounding like a total asshole. What if the tears just poured out when he asked? But, it felt too wrong, so wrong to just watch you fume up like this without adressing the elephant in the room-- the warm beads flooding the crevices of your eyes.

"You lied." You use the knuckles of your fingers to pat at the corners of your eyes, breathing in a shaky breath as you do, chest slowly rising. "Why did you-"

Okay, he could understand you were beyond frustrated, but falsely accusing him of lying. Oh, he couldn't stand it, even if it was you pointing fingers at him. Even if it was his dear, beloved friend.

"When did I-"

"Hello, I just couldn't help but notice that dress on you, ma'am. It looks wonderful."

You turn around, looking like a deer in headlights at the saleswoman who probably watched that whole shit-show with front-row seats. Gojo, on the other hand, takes in a sharp breath, rubbing his cheek before acknowledging the fact that they were in public, fighting in public, like a-

"Oh? Are you two a couple? We actually have a His and Her deal going on until the end of this month. Would you be interested?" It's the same woman he accidentally ignored, the same woman who unknowingly directed you to Gojo's lie. She's back, this time to upsell you on products you really don't need and can't afford. You thought you had formed some kind of alliance, but alas, she was just doing her job. Unfortunately, you were her target.

Now this, this was the reason for his visit in the first place. There was no way he was going to leave without purchasing color-coordinated outfits, the same ones he's been anticipating the release of since the beginning of winter. Usually, he'd be the type to despise such a release, one that didn't serve him any purpose, but because of you, and solely because of you he was...

"Yes. We're interested-"

"No-" You protest, the tears drying up against the dry of your eyes.

"We are interested." He grits his teeth at you, pulling you in closer to his side, saving face with a smile as his arm wraps around your uneven shoulders. "There's a matching suit for this dress, right? I saw it in the catalog."

"I-" You try to refuse, but they've already beat you to it. What was this? Your unlucky day?

You've been having a lot of those recently. And this day is no different when his arm sticks you to him like glue, feeling the outline of his body against your hip. You shudder, skin crawling once more at the mutual warmth. His fingers press against the fabric of your shoulder, giving you a light squeeze and pat. You might as well bark and get on all fours like his dog at this point, that was how you felt. Like Gojo Satoru's pet, always at his service.

The woman gives him an eager nod, "I'll get the sets out for you two. Please give me a moment."

Your eyes shoot up at him, and it's an angry look, no doubt. First, your vision traces his fingers that hold you, then at the knowing smile on his face. He knows you hate it, and he's just going to continue this torture of his until he's satisfied. You didn't even have to go through another cycle of defiance only to cower at his Six Eyes. Like a dog, you've been trained into obedience, without a single treat in your bowl or stomach.

In other words, you're at a loss. Advantage-wise, speech-wise, physically-speaking, emotionally-speaking... all of it.

Even though you eye him with such venom when that neutral expression looks back down at you, those beads still linger. You don't know what to make of your own conflict anymore, having a difficult time as the ground fills your line of vision.

"Hey, why did you tell her that?" You whisper-hiss, as if those words were meant to be kept a hidden secret. "Now she thinks we're a couple..."

There they are, Satoru takes notes of those tides as his arm slips from your shoulders. They're clashing, the gritty sand soaking those waves dry.

"Are you okay?" Did he have the right to ask such a question? To show an ounce of his care? Was he allowed to?

"It was for the discount." Is what comes out instead as he widens the small gap between the both of you. Ironically, this much more appropriate response leaves him questioning his own intentions. "Why? Does it bother you?"

No, it shouldn't bother you. It doesn't.

"You ass..." You mutter, hoping that somehow a miracle occurs. One so miraculous that his memories of your vulnerability erase.

However, such miracles never seem to hit you - they miss by a large shot.

"I hate you."

Or maybe they do as Gojo just nods. At least this once as you break contact with him, a comfortable silence settling in.

"The feeling's mutual, don't worry."

Satoru doesn't want to test the validity his words.

"You lied."

That isn't so far off from the truth.

...

"How is it?"

Your reflection is disappointing. The colors that swallow you are lackluster, they trap you.

"I don't like it." What outfit was this again? You lost track.

"Oh, that's too bad. Does it fit?" Satoru crosses his legs, resting in a fancy, maroon velvet armchair.

"...Yes." You answer, rubbing your arm. You're losing.

"What was that?" He tips his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "Sorry, I just can't hear you."

As if.

"It fits." You speak up, tone numb as you tell him what he wants to hear.

"Good."

This, unfortunately, has been the norm of your conversations for the past two hours. Gojo would pick out an outfit from the spring catalog, force ask you to try it on, then he'd ask for your optimistic opinions which he held zero regard for whatsoever before buying or trashing it.

"Excuse me," He holds up a hand before pointing at you. You blink at this, dread filling you whole. "She'll take this one as well."

You did not say that, but you must be remembering things wrong.

The saleswoman nods. "Of course, sir."

She moves to pack up a fresh set, but quickly presses onto her own breaks when he opens his mouth to command speak once more. Poor thing, you can't help but feel your own foot ache at the amount of times she's had to deal with this.

"Also, I want all the accessories."

"A-all?" She raises both eyebrows, masking her shock with a boxy smile. "Are you-"

"I'm sure." Satoru nods, finally looking at the woman.

"Yes, sir. I'll get started on that right away." She scurries off with such urgency that you'd think she was held at gunpoint.

Your lips flubber as you exhale, taking in your reflection. Today has weirdly been all about you, in the worst way imaginable. You can't seem to catch a break with the absurd amount of haughty-designer outfits thrown onto you. This one in particular was your least favorite.

A blue shirt, reminiscent of those soul-sucking Six Eyes, short-sleeved with a slight puff in the shoulders, adorned with buttons of a similar shade. Though it is soft to the touch, it's more than unbelievable to you that this costs around three-hundred yen. The white lace skirt draped all the way down your ankles is no cheaper either, but a couple hundred yen was like child's play for the rich. Another regular day, nothing new.

Furthermore, Gojo hasn't tried on a single thing. He just assumes he'll like his side of the outfit based on yours, a total gamble of your money.

"Is there anything else...?" You decide to follow routine, but of course, it doesn't work when you finally accept your fate.

"Nah, you can go change now." He rolls his shoulders back before getting back on his feet, the chair as empty as he found it. "I'll be waiting outside, yeah?"

You carefully nod, studying his sudden change in demeanor as he whistles to himself, that stern expression wiped off the surface of his face. Now that was bipolar.

"Okay." You'd hate to send him into another frenzy of playing dress-up with a doll that was more than unwilling because you would also like to move on from whatever this was.

One piece after another, as if you're being timed, you strip down your clothes only to re-dress yourself in your original (work) clothes. Oh, how you long for that nine-to-five lifestyle, how you miss being stuck in that stiff office chair. Today taught you that being rich and ambitious was not for the weak, that you, the weak, suited the likes of a corporate, forty-hour work week. Not this pretend fantasy, this mere illusion.

Right now, you'd do anything to escape this hell-hole of a place and that demon of man.

"Oh," Your hands reach for your jacket- sorry, his jacket.

"You lied."

You forgot to prove your point, the evident truth that Gojo Satoru was a liar.

...

You can't believe it. Not a single bit.

"For the last time, and I say this with all due respect, but your items have already been paid for, ma'am." The bald man at the counter sighs, holding a receipt before you.

You cautiously scan the very long paper, fingers grabbing it's very end as your eyes widen at the total.

"But... but-"

You profusely rub your eyes, blinking over and over. You might as well go into cardiac arrest at the seven bolded digits, grasping the thin receipt between your shaky fingers.

"Correct," His voice cuts through your multiple stammers. "You didn't pay, your boyfriend did, ma'am."

B-boyfriend? Gojo Satoru? That man?

"He didn't, and he's not my-" You don't even get the chance to make your case clear.

"The signature is at the very bottom."

You stuff your face into the very butt of the paper, eyes flickering between the signature line and the uncanny smiley face drawn on top it. What an eyesore.

How in the world did he pay? You chew onto the flakes of your lips, releasing a deep breath from the very depths of your lungs. You were under the impression that Gojo came here with absolutely nothing but himself. And the flowers. You almost forgot those flowers, and you accidentally remember how ugly and spacious they look sitting on the counter of your kitchen island.

"Ah, I... I see now, sorry." You let out an involuntary laugh, shoving the receipt down your pocket. "I'm sorry for taking up your time, let me just-"

You grunt, looping one bag onto your arm after another, the worker behind the counter blankly staring as you visibly struggle. Jeez. Were you the one working customer service or was he?

"Have- Have a nice rest of your day." Somehow you manage to carry all six bags, three on your left and three on your right as you head towards salvation. Which was better known as the exit of this damn place.

"You too, ma'am."

Thanks, you mouth to yourself.

You have a feeling the rest of your day will be anything but nice.

...

#ao3 fanfic #ao3 writer #enemies to lovers #eventual smut #fanfic #friends to lovers #romance #archive of our own #jujutsu gojo #jujutsu kaisen #gojo satoru #gojo x reader #jjk gojo #satoru gojo #gojo smut

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bananaofswifts · 3 months

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01 - Taylor Swift

No one in the music industry wielded more power over the past year than Taylor Swift, who made history at stadiums, movie theaters and on the Billboard charts, leaving even the most seasoned executives speechless. While they’d long celebrated her staggering popularity as a singer, songwriter and performer, her force as a strategic business leader suddenly came into sharper focus — and industry veterans took notes as they watched some of her bravest and most innovative business risks reap remarkable rewards.

At 34, she is one of the music industry’s most charismatic and influential leaders — and she rewrites the rules.

“The piece of advice I would give to the other executives on this list is that the best ideas are usually ones without industry precedent,” Swift tells Billboard. “The biggest crossroads moments of my career came down to sticking to my instincts when my ideas were looked at with skepticism. When someone says to me, ‘But that has never been done successfully before,’ it fires me up. We have to take strategic risks every day in this industry, but every once in a while, you have to really trust your gut and take a flying leap. My rerecordings are my favorite example of this, and I’m extremely grateful to my team and fans for taking that leap with me because it absolutely changed my life.”

Sage advice for an industry in which instinct has largely been supplanted by metrics and data analysis.

In December, Time named Swift its 2023 Person of the Year. In September, after encouraging her 279 million Instagram followers to vote and linking to vote.org, the nonpartisan nonprofit said it received over 35,000 registrations. She appears on the cover of this issue of Billboard and in the No. 1 spot of our annual Power 100 issue because her force across the business of music is now unparalleled — and because she models commitment to innovation that the rest of the business will need in order to tackle the big challenges ahead.

Swift’s gambles have paid off handsomely over the past year.

Her massive The Eras stadium tour, which began in March after she controversially put all the tickets on sale at once, crashing Ticketmaster and sparking mass hysteria, grossed an estimated $906.1 million in 2023 and is poised to become the highest-grossing global tour of all time before it wraps in December, according to Billboard.

The Golden Globe-nominated Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film, taped during her six-show run at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., in August, has grossed over $261.6 million worldwide since its October opening, according to AMC Theatres Entertainment. In January, the publicly traded movie-house chain announced that the film’s box-office take made it the highest-grossing concert/documentary picture ever released, surpassing Michael Jackson’s 2009 This Is It. Once again blazing a new path, Swift made a groundbreaking distribution deal directly with AMC Theaters instead of linking with a film studio.

Swift has shaken up the catalog market, too. When Scooter Braun infuriated her by acquiring the master recordings of her first six albums through his Ithaca Holdings and then sold them to investment firm Shamrock Capital at a profit, Swift rerecorded the albums with loving precision and added bonus tracks to the new releases. They performed phenomenally well, as she deftly used her tour to promote them. When her latest rerecording (and 14th studio album overall), 1989 (Taylor’s Version), spent its fifth week at atop the Billboard 200 at the end of 2023, Swift beat Elvis Presley’s record for the most weeks at No. 1 by a solo artist. Her industry market share last year was 1.72%. If she were her own genre, she’d rank ninth for 2023 — bigger than jazz.

“She’s the smartest artist I’ve ever worked with,” says Messina Touring Group’s Louis Messina, who promotes Swift’s tours and has worked with her since 2005. “She outworks everybody and she has always had this vision. If you’re around her, you can’t help but believe in her.” —Melinda Newman

#taylor swift

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emporium · 10 months

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Brick's Going on Vacation

Just a quick heads up that the shop will be closed from July 10th - July 17th.

The first few days of my vacation I'm going to be doing inventory. Yay :) . Basically the number of items has gotten out of control so I'm going to see what we got and try to get the catalog back under control. Don't be surprised if you see some items missing when I get back. For the rest of the time I'm going to the annual convention of the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors, Inc. I love old mechanical things so this seemed like fun to me. The nice thing is it's a vacation for you too as during this time there won't be any posts on the Emporium or merch ads. It will be like the merch shop doesn't exist for a week, you're welcome :) . The store should be reopened on the 18th unless I decide to not come home and flee to Japan instead. I'll let you know.

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steddieasitgoes · 4 months

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@steddiemas Day 23 Prompt: Christmas Themed Sentence Starters

“This is what Christmas is all about.”

Tags: Established Relationships, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Are Best Friends, Robin Buckley & Eddie Munson Are Best Friends, Steve Has Semi-Decent Parents, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Humor, Food Mentions

wc: 780 | Rating: G

Read on ao3 | ao3 collection

Steve’s favorite Christmas tradition growing up was making homemade advent calendars.

He has fond memories of taking over the dining room table with supplies while his mom hovered over him. Of scouring the annual Christmas catalog for what he might want this year before cutting them out carefully with a pair of scissors. Glueing the cutout pictures to the top of the fluorescent green poster board at the top like a star before creating a candy tree with wrapped chocolates (and maybe stealing one or two for all the hard work he’d been doing).

It was a tradition he always looked forward to. Unfortunately, it came to an abrupt end when the ants found the chocolate one, infiltrating the homemade calendar and the entire Harrington kitchen two days before Christmas. He’s never seen his mom so stressed out before.

After that, the only advent calendars found in the Harrington house were those decorative wooden ones with little trinkets inside. It was fun for Steve the first year when he didn’t know what was hidden behind the little doors. But year after year of opening the same wooden creatures got old, fast.

And so the advent calendar tradition faded away.

Until now.

Now that he has his own place with Robin and Eddie, he’s bringing it back.

The trio spends the last day of November working on their calendars. Their small living room coffee table is littered with catalogs, poster boards, and a questionable amount of candy. Robin’s going crazy with a container of glitter that’s probably going to end up caked into the carpet and Eddie’s hard at work drawing his gifts instead of going the “easy route.”

Steve’s in the middle of it all, sprawled out on the floor with his own advent calendar feeling like a kid again. What does he want? What candy is he going to decorate with? The possibilities are endless.

By the time dinner rolls around, the trio have finished their unique advent calendars and tack them up on the door to their small pantry. Easy access for them to grab a piece of candy every morning and a constant reminder of how many days left they have to finish their Christmas shopping.

🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫 🍫

Steve wakes up early on December 1st eager to pluck the first candy from his homemade calendar. Just like yesterday, he feels like a kid again, giddily sliding into the kitchen. The calendars are exactly where they left them, except something is wrong.

No ants, thank god, but Eddie’s calendar is completely void of candy. Nothing but tiny scraps of colored foil wrapping left behind — something got into them. A someone to be exact. Following the trail of colored foil littering the floor, Steve stalks into the adjacent kitchen and finds Eddie shoving a mini Reese Peanut Butter Cup into his mouth before adding the empty wrapper to the mountain of colored foil in front of him.

“Eddie!” He shouts, startling the man from his slumber. “You’re supposed to eat one a day, not the whole damn thing!”

“Moderation is for losers, Stevie,” he mumbles through a mouthful of candy. Swallowing carefully, he offers Steve a chocolate-teeth-covered grin as he waves his hands around the mess. “This is what Christmas is all about.”

“Eds,” Steve sighs. “You’ve got your holidays mixed up. Halloween is the one where you make yourself sick on candy.”

Eddie huffs, shaking his head. “And Easter, and Christmas,” Eddie says, ticking them off with his chocolate-covered finger. “Valentine’s Day if you’re lucky. Hell, any day is a make yourself sick with candy day if you try hard enough!”

“You’re ridiculous,” Steve says, shaking his head as he begins to clean up Eddie’s mess. He doesn’t have to, knows that Eddie will do it himself, but he figures he might as well help considering the stomach ache is going to hit him sooner rather than later.

“Hey, what happened to Eddie’s advent calendar?” Robin asks, shuffling into the kitchen with her allotted piece of candy for the morning.

“Why have one when you can have them all?” Eddie grins.

“You know what, that’s a great idea!” She says, turning on her heel and heading back to her own calendar.

Steve sighs, he should have seen this one coming, but how can he deny his best friends the joy of Christmas candy? Even if it means he’ll be paying the price as caretaker later when he’s holding back their hair.

“I think we should make this a new tradition!” Eddie says.

“I’ll be making an advent calendar next year,” Steve says. “You two are getting put on probation."

#steddiemas #steddie #steddie fluff #steddie fic #steddie ficlet #steve harrington #robin buckley #eddie munson #platonic stobin #eddie munson fic #steve harrington fic #stranger things #stranger things fic #dani writes

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antiquatedplumbobs · 10 months

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Christmas 1911

The holiday season at Sable Dairy was always a jolly, convivial time, with plenty of good food and fun to be had. Freddy's return from Britechester brought with it an increased energy and desire to make the most of the holiday.

The boys were tasked with finding and securing the perfect Christmas tree; selecting a fine fir from the small copse behind the farm. The assistance of a sledge was needed to drag it home, but once inside and garnished with a festive popcorn and cranberry garland it took up a dazzling countenance tucked up against the stair. The card table that usually sat there banished to the attic for the time being.

It would be a lie to say that none of the Sewells had a sweet tooth, and so a flurry of holiday baking was accomplished by both Violet and Elsie. Elsie, having recently discovered both a passion and talent for baking, had been allowed to build the annual gingerbread house unsupervised (with some assistance from Charlie). To Violet's delight, none of the pieces were broken, and only one had some small tooth marks that she was studiously ignoring.

A fine meal of roast ham, potatoes, vegetables, mince pies, and Christmas puddings was made by Violet. The family exclaimed that it was the best they had eaten yet; leftovers were scarce, despite the magnitude of the meal.

Under the tree, the collection of presents the family had gotten for one another was wrapped gaily in bright papers and festooned with ribbons. Will's present to Elsie was front and center; a wrapping job foregone due to the awkward shape and size. The small pram he had built, but the little mohair bear, the latest fad toy for young children, he had ordered himself from the Sims Roebuck Catalog, paying the fees with the money he had begun saving from the farm work and odd jobs he did. He had been right; the smile on her face had been completely worth it.

Violet received a teapot in a stylish new pattern. Charlie was gifted a wooden train set, each car hand carved by Will and the functional track built by Hamish. The bright paint job, with wheels that resembled the peppermint sweets Nathanial gave each of his grandchildren, was all by Violet's precise hand. Elsie received a new dress from her mother and father, with bright red embroidery and a snowy white collar; she donned it immediately. Hamish found a box of cigars under the tree with his name on them, but with a strict reminder from Violet not to smoke in the house. For Will, Hamish had purchased a sturdy and expansive tool kit, and for Freddy, a fine leather attaché to hold his school papers and a beautifully crafted fountain pen.

The day was long and filled with excitement and good times. The family perhaps stayed up later than they should, all except one that is. His father, once realizing his torpor, carried Charlie to his bed, where his dreams were full of trains made of gingerbread and passengers that bore striking resemblances to Christmas puddings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

next / previous / first

#its Christmas in july everyone!!#i swear one of these days my in game season will match up irl....#ts4 decades challenge #sims 4 decades challenge #ts4 legacy #ts4 storytelling #sims 4 legacy #sewell legacy #william sewell #frederick sewell #elizabeth sewell #charles sewell #hamish sewell #violet sewell #sewell 1910s

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stampswithbenefitscom · 7 months

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Stampin' Up! SO MANY EXCITING THING HAPPENING!

Please use hostess code: UH7H7M3P when placing an online order under $150. SHOP 24/7 AT http://www.TheresaPingel.Stampinup.net We want to celebrate our 35th anniversary in style! From 3–31 October, anyone who joins our fun crafting community as a new demonstrator can choose either 35% OFF the cost of their Starter Kit or get 35% MORE product with their Starter Kit! What a deal! Use the…

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davidmariottecomics · 10 months

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The 6 Figure Theory

Hello!

In today's blog, I'm getting *spicy*! In that I have a hot take that is of course related to the current state of the entertainment industry, but isn't as directly about comics or writing or editing or what you might usually expect. Anyway, let's get to it!

The 6 Figure Theory The 6 Figure Theory states that once an individual is earning $100,000, to maintain that level of pay, they must sacrifice some level of morality. It only applies to individuals making over $100K annually--not families where multiple incomes may combine to be over $100K. And the level of morality sacrificed is hard to quantify, both because morality is deeply personal and often hard to quantify for an individual and because the extremes one is willing to go to are likely tied to the level of money being brought in.

So, for example, let's say you're a big shot Hollywood executive who has been paid $500 MILLION over the course of about 5 years. Let's say you're making "384 times the average pay of a Hollywood writer." Chances are you are out of touch with reality and willing to make a bunch of business decisions that make you look like an incompetent asshole. Maybe you'll cancel competed and even released work as a way of getting tax write-offs. Maybe you'll attempt to sell your film music catalog. Maybe you'll repeatedly not come to the table in any sort of reasonable way in such a way that multiple unions go on strike. Maybe you'll spend your time at a retreat for some of the wealthiest people in the world turning down Venmo requests from the people whose projects you've canceled to save a dime. Maybe you'll be described as the most hated man in Hollywood.

Now, that's just one extreme example. He's so incredibly highly paid--if he was willing to just not take a salary for 5 years, he could single-handedly pay out the proposal amount from the WGA. And, let me check my notes, he would still be incredibly, unjustly wealthy and live his extravagant life. That's the sort of money that allows true ignorance.

I don't know anyone making David Zaslav money, personally. And I'm pretty glad to not. But even at the lower side of that 6 figure theory, there are people who are being paid to make decisions that may compromise their morals--from freezing pay rates to letting people go to instituting AI. Or, maybe you're making that and can remain morally upright in your work, but like... become an anti-vaxxer or something.

It's easy to look at the wealthy and famous and see issues. Humans are inherently fallible and scrutiny goes harder with more public visibility. But I have to wonder, truly, to what extent higher wages correspond with lower ethics. And I think that's a question a lot of folks are asking on the picket line now too. Make sure you send them your support, whether through the Entertainment Community Fund or direct action with SAG-AFTRA or the WGA. I have not specifically seen picketing actions at SDCC, but obviously, be aware and supportive if they happen. And I saw things like the Venture Bros creators pulling out of the show (though I'm unclear on if the new movie will still be debuting regardless). You don't have to cancel your streaming platforms--in fact, largely the request has been the opposite because the concern is fewer people on a streamer will be used as data justification that the work of actors and writers doesn't make enough difference to maintain an audience and therefore their labor is less valuable. And, finally, there are other unions going on strike, like UPS, and they deserve your support too.

Passing $5 Back-and-forth Infinitely Forever

It stinks that this has to come back to those of us who are making less to support each other. But whether it's because there's increased morality for folks making lower wages (and, I'd describe the shrinking middle class as that) or, maybe, it's less a matter of morality than community and solidarity (though... I'd contest those are inextricably linked), it does come to us standing together. And sometimes, it means doing what little we can, supporting each other back-and-forth with the same $5.

With that rant out of the way, see ya at SDCC next week!

What I enjoyed this week: Blank Check (Podcast), Craig of the Creek (Cartoon), Honkai Star Rail (Video game) Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links (Video game), My Adventures with Superman (Cartoon), the beach, Girly Drinks by Mallory O'Meara (Book), The Broken Room by Peter Clines (Book), Crime Scene Kitchen (TV show), all the folks I've seen being supportive of the joint WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike--including the many folks changing their SDCC plans, getting closer to finalized on SDCC plans myself! Oh, and I forgot to mention it a couple weeks ago, but Poison Ivy: Thorns by Kody Keplinger & Sara Kipin slaps.

New Releases this week (7/12/2023): I didn't have any new releases this week, but it was a pretty big week for IDW as a whole! Eddie Campbell's The Second Fake Death of Eddie Campbell & The Fate of the Artist, Van Jensen & Jesse Lonergan's Arca, the first issues of Stephen Mooney and David Messina's The Rocketeer: In the Den of Thieves, G. Willow Wilson, Chris Wildgoose, and Msassky's The Hunger and the Dusk, and the second issue of Andrew Wheeler and Ilias Kyriazis's Cat Fight, the My Little Pony 40th Anniversary Special, plus more TMNT and Trek than you can shake a stick at!

New Releases next week (7/19/2023): Also an off week, but there's somehow even more TMNT to check out, plus the start of our big Star Trek event: Day of Blood!

Final Order Cut-Off next week (7/17/2023 - AKA Preorder Deadline) Godzilla: Monsters & Protectors - All Hail the King! TPB (Editor)

Announcements:

I'll be at San Diego Comic-Con! I'll see you at Sonic the Hedgehog: Speeding to the 900th Adventure on Sunday at 10, room 25ABC! If we've planned something, I'll see ya there too! And if not, y'know, at least let me know you'll be around and hopefully we run into each other!

I'm now on Patreon! A big part of it is a new way of accessing this very blog! But I'm also going to be updating it with some other cool stuff soon--from exclusive blogs to old scripts and pitch materials that I can share to funky one-off videos/podcasts (?) to group funded new comics pages! And there'll even be updates during SDCC (thanks, pre-scheduling)!

Do you not want to read this pitch for my Patreon? Good news: If you subscribe to it, this is cut out from the blog! Ooo aah!

Lastly, because of SDCC, expect no or a very short blog next week. And Becca's Twitch stream won't be back until the 25th, I believe. But in the meantime, Becca's own Patreon has been very active, including some stuff they recently drew on stream! And their webshop is current (though orders won't ship til after SDCC). It's Non-Binary Awareness week and San Diego Pride, so now's a good time to support them!

Pic of the Week:

I was in Old Town earlier this week and saw this very fun display of "Sonic" hats. Love that they come in every color.

#wga solidarity #sag solidarity #entertainment ethics #6 figure theory #entertainment hot takes #eat the rich #sonic idw #sonic sdcc 2023

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

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Brinklump Linkdump

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

Life comes at you fast, links come at you faster. Once again, I've arrived at Saturday with a giant backlog of links I didn't fit in this week, so it's time for a linkdump, the 14th in the series:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

It's the Year of Our Gourd twenty and twenty-four and holy shit, is rampant corporate power rampant. On January 1, the inbred droolers of Big Pharma shat out their annual price increases, as cataloged in 46Brooklyn's latest Brand Drug List Price Change Box Score:

https://www.46brooklyn.com/branddrug-boxscore

Here's the deal: drugs that have already been developed, brought to market, and paid off are now getting more expensive. Why? Because the pharma companies have "pricing power," the most reliable indicator of monopoly. Ed Cara rounds up the highlights for Gizmodo:

https://gizmodo.com/ozempic-wegovy-wellbutrin-oxycontin-drug-price-increase-1851179427

What's going up? Well, Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists. These drugs have made untold billions for their manufacturers, so naturally, they're raising the price. That's how markets work, right? When firms increase the volume of a product, the price goes up? Right? Other drugs that are going up include Wellbutrin (an antidepressant that's also widely used in smoking cessation) and the blood thinner Plavix. I mean, why the hell not? These companies get billions in research subsidies, invaluable government patent privileges, and near-total freedom to abuse the patent system with evergreening:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/23/everorangeing/#taste-the-rainbow

The most amazing things about monopolies is how the contempt just oozes out of them. It's like these guys can't even pretend to give a shit. You want guillotines? Because that's how you get guillotines.

Take Apple. They just got their asses handed to them in court by Epic, who successfully argued that Apple's rule requiring everyone who sells through the App Store to use Apple's payment processor and pay Apple 30% out of every dollar they bring in was an antitrust violation. Epic won, then won the appeal, then SCOTUS told Apple they wouldn't hear the case, so that's that.

Right? Wrong. Apple's pulled a malicious compliance stunt that could shame the surly drunks my great-aunt Lisa used to boss in the Soviet electrical engineering firm she ran. Apple has announced that app companies that process transactions using their own payment processors on the web must still pay Apple a 27% fee for every dollar their process:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apples-app-store-rule-changes-draw-sharp-rebuke-from-critics-150047160.html

In addition, Apple will throw a terrifying FUD-screen up every time a user clicks a payment link that goes to the web:

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/second-verse-same-as-the-first/

This is obviously not what the court had in mind, and there's no way this will survive the next court challenge. It's just Apple making sure that everyone knows it hates us all and wants us to die. Thanks, Tim Apple, and right back atcha.

Not to be outdone in the monopolistic mustache-twirling department, Ubisoft just announced that it is going to shut down its driving simulator game The Crew, which it sold to users with a "perpetual license":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

This is some real Darth Vader MBA shit. "Yeah, we sold you a 'perpetual license' to this game, but we're terminating it. I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Ubisoft sure are innovators. They've managed the seemingly impossible feat of hybridizing Darth Vader and Immortan Joe. Ubisoft's head of subscriptions, the guillotine-ready Philippe Tremblay, told GamesIndustry.biz that gamers need to get "comfortable" with "not owning their games":

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-new-ubisoft-and-getting-gamers-comfortable-with-not-owning-their-games

Or, as Immortan Joe put it: "Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!"

Capitalism without constraint is enshittification's handmaiden, and the latest victim is Ello, the "indie" social media startup that literally promised – on the sacred honor of its founders – that it would never sell out its users. When Ello took VC and Andy Baio questioned how this could be squared with this promise, the founders mocked him and others for raising the question. Their response boiled down to "we are super-chill dudes and you can totally trust us."

They raised more capital, and used that to create a nice place for independent artists, who piled into the platform and provided millions of unpaid hours of creative labor to help the founders increase its value. The founders and their investors turned the company into a Public Benefit Corporation, which meant they had an obligation to serve the public benefit.

But then they took more investment money and simply (and silently) sold their assets to a for-profit. Struggling to raise capital, the founders opted to secretly sell the business to a sleazy branding company called Talenthouse. Its users didn't know about the change, though the site sure had a lot of Talenthouse design competitions all of a sudden.

Finally, the company announced the change as the last founders left. Rather than announcing that the new owners were untrustworthy scum, warning their users to get their data and get out, the founders posted oblique, ominous statements to Instagram. The company started stiffing the winners of those design competitions. Then, one day, poof, Ello disappeared, taking all its users' data with it. Poof:

https://waxy.org/2024/01/the-quiet-death-of-ellos-big-dreams/

I'm sure the founders' decisions each seemed reasonable at the moment. That's every terrible situation arises: you rationalize that a single compromise isn't that big of a deal, and then you do the same for the next compromise, and the next, and the next. Pretty soon, you're betraying everyone who believed in you.

One answer to this is "Ulysses pacts": making binding commitments to do right before you are tempted. Throw away all your Oreos when you go on a diet and you can't be tempted to eat a whole sleeve of them at 2AM. License your software under the GPL and your investors can't force you to make it proprietary. Set up a warrant canary and the feds can't force you to keep their spying secret:

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

If the founders were determined to build a trustworthy, open, independent company, they could have published their quarterly books, livestreamed their staff meetings, built data-export tools that emailed users every week with a link to download everything they'd posted since the last week. Merely halting any of these practices would have been a signal that things were wrong. Anyone who says they won't be tempted in the moment to make a "reasonable" compromise in the hopes of recovering whatever they're trading away by living to fight another day is bullshitting you, and possibly themself.

The inability to project the consequences of your bad decisions in the future is the source of endless mischief and heartbreak. Take movie projectors. A couple decades ago, the studio cartel established a standard for digital movie distribution to cinematic exhibitors called the Digital Cinema Initiative. Because studio executives are more worried about stopping piracy than they are about making sure that people who pay for movies get to see them, they build digital rights management into this standard.

Movie theaters had to spend fortunes to upgrade to "secure" projectors. A single vendor, Deluxe Technicolor, monopolized the packaging of movies into "Digital Cinema Prints" for distribution to these projectors, and they used all kinds of dirty tricks to force distributors to use their services, like arbitrarily flunking third-party DCPs over picky shit like not starting and ending on a black frame.

Over time, the ability to use unencrypted files was stripped away, meaning every DCP needed to be encrypted, and every projector needed to have up-to-date decryption keys. This system broke down on Jan 1, 2024, and cinemas all over the world found they couldn't play Wonka. Many just shut down for the day and refunded their customers:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/1/24021915/alamo-drafthouse-outage-sony-projector

The problem? Something that every PKI system has to wrangle: an expired certificate from Deluxe Technicolor. The failure has been dubbed the Y2K24 debacle by projectionists and film-techs, who are furious:

http://www.film-tech.com/vbb/forum/main-forum/34652-the-y2k24-bug-major-digital-outage-today

Making everything worse is that Sony mothballed the division that maintains its projectors, so there's no one who can update them to accommodate Technicolor's workaround. Struggling mom-and-pop theaters are having to junk their systems and replace them. There's plenty of blame to go around, but Sony is definitely the most negligent link in the chain. Shame on them.

Big corporations LARP this performance of competence and seriousness, but they are deeply unserious. This week, I wrote, "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

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

Score one for team deeply unserious. The multinational delivery company DPD fired its support staff and replaced them with a chatbot. The chatbot can't tell you where your parcels are, but it can be prompt-injected into coming up with profane poems about how badly DPD sucks:

https://twitter.com/ashbeauchamp/status/1748034519104450874

There once was a chatbot named DPD, Who was useless at providing help. It could not track parcels, Or give information on delivery dates, And it could not even tell you when your driver would arrive.

DPD was a waste of time, And a customer's worst nightmare. It was so bad, That people would rather call the depot directly, Than deal with the useless chatbot.

One day, DPD was finally shut down, And everyone rejoiced. Finally, they could get the help they needed, From a real person who knew what they were doing.

This is…the opposite of an AI hallucination? It's AI clarity.

As with all botshit, this kind of AI self-negging is funny and fresh the first time you see it, but just wait until 3,000 people have published their own versions to your social feed. AI novelty regresses to the mean damn quickly.

The old, good web, by contrast, was full of enduring surprises, as the world's weirdest and most delightful mutants filled the early web with every possible variation on every possible interest, expression, argument, and gag. Now, you can search the old, good web with Old'aVista, an Altavista lookalike that searches old pages from "personal websites that used to be hosted on services like Geocities, Angelfire, AOL, Xoom and so on," all ganked from the Internet Archive:

http://oldavista.com/

I miss the old, good internet and the way it let weirdos find each other and get seriously weird with one another. Think of steampunk, a subculture that wove together artists, makers, costumers, fiction writers, and tinkerers in endlessly creative ways. My old pal Roger Wood was the world's most improbable steampunk: he was a gay ex-navy gunner who grew up in a small town in the maritimes but moved to Toronto where he became the world's most accomplished steampunk clockmaker.

I was Roger's neighbour for a decade. He died last year, and I miss him all the time. I was in Toronto in December and saw a few of his last pieces being sold in galleries and I was just skewered on the knowledge that I'd never see him again, never visit his workshop:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/16/klockwerks/#craphound

A reader just sent this five-year-old mini documentary about Roger, shot in his wonderful workshop. Watching it made me happy and sad and then happy again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqMGomM8yF8

The old, good internet was so great. It was a place where every kind of passion could live. It was a real testament to the power of geeking out together, no matter how often the suits demand that we "stop talking to each other and start buying things":

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

The world is full of people with weird passions and I love them all, mostly. Learning about Don Bolles's collection of decades' worth of lost pet posters was a moment of pure joy (I just wish more of it was online):

https://ameliatait.substack.com/p/the-man-who-collects-lost-pet-posters

That's the future I was promised: one where every kind of freak can find every other kind of freak. Despite the nipple-deep botshit we wade through online, and the relentless cheapening of words like "innovation" and "future," there are still occasional gleams of the future I want to live in.

Like the researchers who spliced a photosynthesis gene into brewer's yeast (a fungus) and got it to photosynthesize, and to display enhanced fitness:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01744-X

As Doug Muir writes on Crooked Timber, this is pretty kooky! Fungi – the coolest of the kingdoms! – can't photosynthesize. The idea that you can just add the photosynthesis gene to a thing that can't photosynthesize and have it just kind of work is wild!

https://crookedtimber.org/2024/01/19/occasional-paper-purple-sun-yeast/

As Muir writes: "Animals have no evolutionary history of photosynthesis and aren’t designed for it, but the same is true for yeast. So… no reason this shouldn’t be possible. A photosynthesizing cat? Sure, why not."

Why not indeed?!

OK, that's this week's linkdump done and dusted. It only remains for me to share the news with you that the trolley problem has been finally and comprehensively solved, by [email protected], of the IWW IU 520 (railroad workers):

Slip the switch by flipping it while the trolley's front wheels have passed through, but before the back wheels do. This will cause a controlled derailment bringing the trolley to a safe halt.

https://kolektiva.social/@sidereal/111779015415697244

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

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/2024/01/20/melange/#i-have-heard-the-mermaids-singing

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