#Minor Spheres | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

daydadahlias · 9 months

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what’s your thought on minors reading your stories?

hm, that's a good question, and I think one that's far more nuanced/convoluted than people often give it credit for and than I often like to think about.

obviously, I'm more than happy for minors to read my G/T and even M rated fics but when we get into the explicit territory - which I assume is what you're asking about - it can get tricky.

i will say, before I get into this far too long and rambling answer, that as a blanket statement, I would prefer that minors did not engage with explicit material period, including my own. However, it would simply be negligent of me to act like there are not minors who actively consume my content.

For a while there, I had "minors dni" in my bio and I also had 18+ for some time but I eventually took both out because I know it doesn't really dissuade people from interacting; if kids/minors want to look at something, they will look at it. And if they can't find it in certain places, they will without a doubt look for it in others.

it's a sad fact about our current culture that by the age of 12, most children will have actively seen pornography - mostly due to pop up ads online and just the sheer volume of pornographic content that exists in our world. so I am under no disillusion that minors also actively seek it out. I mean, I started reading porn when I was 12. Do I think, realistically, that it was a good thing for my emotional development? Uhm, no I don't! I don't think kids should be reading porn; it vastly skews their perceptions of sex and can negatively impact their relationships with sexuality in their adulthood. That's just a proven fact. So if I had any real say in it, I would say that minors should not be reading/viewing porn period, definitely not before the age of 15. That includes my own.

But, all that to say, I understand that I am an adult posting pornography on a public platform; if minors want to stumble on it, they will. I also know that I have all the necessary warnings and content triggers in place should someone come across my work and, at a certain point, if they continue to view it despite it being marked for mature audiences, that is not On Me as a creator. I cannot control what people choose to view.

I will say that, in terms of sexual content, I know that I am always writing healthy and consensual sexual dynamics between my characters so of the porn that minors could be exposed to, mine is certainly not of the dangerous variety for a minor to be consuming.

Am I fully comfortable with the thought of minors reading my material? No. But I'm not going to make it a habit to police people's interaction with the internet and I'm also not going to go through every single one of my followers and search to see if they're a minor to block them if they are. That doesn't stop kids from seeking things out. Frankly, I think blocking minors would only make them seek out other dangerous sexual content. Sometimes I think that I'd rather minors read my explicit material rather than explicit material that is tagged incorrectly, y'know? I'd rather minors read about actual consensual sex than dub-con or rape disguised as such.

At the end of the day, all I want is for minors to recognize that what they read online is not an accurate articulation of what occurs in real life and do their necessary research to be safe when they actively choose to interact with sex irl. But far be it from me to tell them how they should and should not consume written material, y'know?

I have an obligation as a creator (as I think all creators do) to tag my material properly and trigger warn accordingly because I do know realistically that minors might come across it, but from there it's completely out of my hands on if minors choose to engage with it or not.

#hope i articulated myself well on this!!#it's something i think about fairly often bc i do have a couple 'frequent' followers who engage w/ my stuff that i know are minors #and while I as an adult have an obligation to not create close relationships with them or divulge in one on one contact #them consuming my content in a public sphere doesn't... Bother me #minors are 'allowed' to read my stuff if they want to #if the larger question is 'do i think they should' no... i would prefer they didnt #but i know i cant stop them from doing it yknow?#so that's just kind of... how the cookie crumbles #curious why you asked this i dont think ive ever been asked and ive been writing for 3 years now in this fandom #crazy to think about #yeah if ur a minor just make sure u stay safe ok? :)#and i really am here for kids if they need anything. like i really am #i just want kids to be safe first and foremost #pigeon #anon

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closet-of-nikki · 3 months

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Rosy Manifesto

This is Rosy Manifesto! Released in January 2021 as part of the Stele Sphere hell event, it drops at roughly one-third odds for each of the nodes of the event. This hell is unique in that you get tokens for the major suits during pulls, and the nodes themselves drop complete minor suits. As you can't predict what node you'll get this suit on, it could cost anywhere between 600 and 2850 diamonds.

When I got it I was really pleased with the design of this suit in particular, but it's not aged particularly well. There's no makeup, pose, or moveables included. At least the completion reward is diamonds. Of note, it's a top and a bottom instead of a dress.

Individual items below the cut!

#love nikki #suit breakdown #love nikki suit breakdown #rosy manifesto #hell event #Stele Sphere #January 2021 #2021 #requires diamonds #hell event: minor suit #Pigeon category #unposed #no makeup #no moveables #black #white #plants #flowers #roses

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redcallisto · 4 months

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shiny pumpkaboo....

#ruby rambles #hello???#brainrotting over pokemon what year is this #also hi so like #i started actually looking at tumblr's fyp and idky i never did. maybe twt's fyp scarred me. it's actually good here (or just better lol)#so ive been active more lately lol #i have too many ideas and too little time bc i work now sobs #ngl i feel a little out of place rn since there's minors in the pkmn sphere obvs and i #specialized in more gore/horror/not rlly for the kids content #oh. well.#anw i realized kieran reminds me of sumire. maybe that's why i adopted him #apparently i have a huge soft spot for characters who hate themselves to a self-destructive point #and accidentally make it everyones problem

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tuliptiger · 1 year

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Just saw a post about a person being upset or frazzled that depression and anxiety are the "everyman" mental illness. I want to proceed this by saying I am NOT going to be shitting on this person at all and they have a point but I didn't quite agree with uhm the tone or everything about it.

I don't think it's wrong or bad that these two specific mental illnesses have a wider understanding and reach. They have been watered down for lack of a better term because they have come to mean many things including less debilitating symptoms and signs. This is not to say it's bad, I don't think. I think it's objectively good that more people are able to look at themselves and talk with medical professionals and be able to be helped for any severity be it minor or major.

And that was their main point of contention though because the more debilitating cases of anxiety and depression are taken less seriously when using the terms "depression" and "anxiety". I think that is completely a valid point and reasonable thing to be upset about.

However...

I do not think the answer is to "take back" the terms and that also isn't what they said or implied either. What I really heard from them and that post was "when I talk about my life altering devastating mental illness I want to be taken seriously and understood without having to go into detail or explain it" (because the last part can and is incredibly exhausting and frustrating especially if it is not outright understood or has a base assumption of the less debilitating ideas and versions). What I heard was "I want to be taken seriously". That ISN'T what they said but it is what I understood from it.

In which case the solution to this is for people to respect each other, listen to each other with good intentions and faith, and take each other seriously when we talk about ourselves. Unfortunately that's an individual and societal problem that runs a little too deep for this post.

As for the terms, there probably does need to be a language separation between severities of depression and anxiety even though there are rough versions of those already. Like social anxiety, moderate depression, major depressive disorder, chronic depression, oct, ptsd, etc. The very word depression has kind of lost it's oomf but I think for a relatively good reason. Maybe there should be an entire other word for major depression that doesn't include that phrase though to help with that communication gap. IDK. My two cents if that's worth anything.

#watering down #words #depression #anxiety #mental illness #who knows man #i have both and they are both minor #TO ME #who knows how someone else would handle my mental illnesses #i think its all pretty personal and unique and not at the same time because some #feels or has felt what anyone else has felt or feels at any one given moment #no one is truly alone in their suffering or hardships #anyway #i directly benefitted from this of the terms because unless I did show major signs and symptoms i dont #think i wouldve ever been taken seriously or got help if this happened a couple decades ago #who knows maybe it would've gotten worse without the help and then i could justify calling what i have depression #and thats me being defensive about this im glad i got the help when it was minor and im glad the terms were available to me #i am sorry that people dont take common words seriously though im the cultural social sphere we live in though #i think people should just take you seriously no matter

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ride-a-dromedary · 2 years

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I'm glad Primary returned. I always likened Isaac and Primary's relationship to that of an estranged father and son.

I can't say I share that exact sentiment in regards to the father/son dynamic, but I will agree that Isaac and Primary team up was >>>>>

The Primary learning about the nature of humanity from a fellow Kaylon, specifically one he deemed as "flawed", hits so much more powerfully than anything the biologicals have been spewing at him. On their end, it often comes across as flowery self-righteous speeches of defense, regardless of intent.

The *action* of Charly, though, spoke volumes for him, and seeing it through Isaac's eyes allowed him to have an actual click “aha” moment, however brief, because effort was made to connect on his level of understanding.

#like i might be in the minority here but i never saw fault in primary's reasoning concerning humanity's hypocrisy #preaching at them of goodness and morality when our *entire history* is bathed in blood #did he take it too far yes did he paint an entire species with the same brush yes (though tbh again he does have a reason)#but at the end of the day his questioning of motive really isn't wrong #but when isaac steps in it's a lesson in full perspective - logical observation and understanding #Jemi talks the Orville #Jemi gets asks #anonymous #like i understand why they communicate with the kaylon the way they do but you cannot say that the biological characters in this show #have not been incredibly patronizing to others outside their sphere

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blackbutlercharacterpoll2023 · 1 year

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Sphere Music Hall staff

#very minor character #manga #Sphere Music Hall staff

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hua-fei-hua · 1 year

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as soon as it's summer and i'm medicated again i NEED to write a series of essays covering my experiences switching from the broader social sphere of fandom which predominantly ships m/f ships to the social sphere of fandom which predominantly ships m/m, because i feel like a lot of what we say about the other social sphere is simultaneously true and false at the same time, and i've literally never seen anyone talk about it ever

#the m/m shipping sphere is different from the f/f shipping sphere but both are honestly like lowkey disdained by the m/f sphere #well okay the f/f sphere is lowkey disdained while the m/m sphere is like highkey disdained #but at the same time It Is True that the m/f shippers can get pretty bullied by people pushing their m/m ships!!!!#so it's like a historical beef; esp when considering the fact that a lot of the times our tastes in ships can be pretty informed #by the ships our friends/fan community members are getting into in regards to new canons #i wouldn't be surprised if it was common for some nebulous hypothetical concept of an m/m shipper to be like #'oh yeah in this us v. them argument the 'us' is ofc us gay people [m/m and f/f shippers together]'#but i do think it is worth drawing a distinction btwn the m/m shipping spheres n the f/f shipping spheres #many m/m shippers like f/f ships passively; i don't see a lot of f/f shippers get super actively engaged in m/m pairs even on the side #as a result their results on ao3 feel more likely to have a significant % of genuine slush #like in my experience looking through m/m ship tags it's full of slush (referring to fic that's just not to my tastes or poorly written)#but for the most part if a ship is tagged it at least plays a role or shows up in a fic #but if i'm looking for a f/f ship on ao3 god fucking heaven help me; i have to filter so hard it cuts out >50% of the results #and when looking for m/f ships back in the day it was usually shit like 'one-sided' or 'past' or just incredibly minor passing mentions #like complain all you want abt having to go through a massive slush pile of an ao3 tag listing for an m/m ship #but at least we don't have to literally just come together as a community to make an ao3 collection #just to have a repository of fics that are just ABOUT the pairing tagged w/o being forced to grovel through slush like that #like not even 'these are the best fics for this pairing' just 'these are the fics for this pairing'#also. my hot take. is that a lot of the times people who ship *exclusively* m/f ships Are being kinda homophobic to the m/m shippers #like at the very least the way they talk abt the ships or argue with the shippers sounds like it draws on homophobic rhetoric #like the m/f shippers themselves are not necessarily homophobic people. but. like. it's nuanced. there are trends. i have many thoughts #(meanwhile the gen social sphere exists beyond most of my own experiences but god do i feel bad for them when searching through ao3)#also like. this should go w/o saying. but i'm not trying to categorize individual people into 'belonging' to any one specific sphere #but we as people just generally have our fave spots to hang out n those spots have distinctive traits n flavors #n while we're in there commonalities in the people chilling there start to emerge #if we go to a different spot bc we like being there then different things will be had in common #we're looking at strength of overlap here; not individuals #花話 #anyway obviously i have many many thoughts on this subject. this is bc it fascinates me greatly bc i don't see it talked abt #bc for the most part you don't really see people into m/m who used to really like m/f ships the way i did

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dobercorgis · 2 months

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Gameplay-wise I don’t think ffx is for me or at the very least I am not enjoying the fucking trials

#Idek what I’m doing I forgot what the tutorial said #I’m just pressing a wherever and moving spheres to random places #I do not know what I’m doing and I’m only at djose help #I don’t rlly like the random encounters and battles are a bit slow #that’s my minor gripe #misu does stuff

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danielnelsen · 10 months

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im currently working on mapping all the regions in dai areas and each region is defined in one of three ways. the first two are the kind of thing id expect: some are simple rectangular prisms, which is very nice; some are a series of points connected in a loop, which is also fine and just a bit annoying because there can be a lot of points..

but shoutout to all the regions that are a SPHERE

#personal #da #dai #like what do i do when i want to actually plot them on a map #i need to find out what ground level is in that part of the map and what the radius is at that level fml #also. between all the areas in the game there are roughly 400 regions so......this is Taking Some Time #i briefly mentioned some time ago just how hard it's been to actually find where the regions are defined #there's like 5 steps to even connect the name of a region to its definition and it's not possible to view in the frosty editor #and it's not even the same for every area #the last thing i was expecting was SPHERES tho WHY are they spheres #im excited to start plotting the regions on the maps but im gonna finish writing them all down first or ill lose momentum for it #i think i can finish it all today; im about 150 in out of 400 and the first few areas will have taken longer #although..a lot of what ive done so far have been minor areas which are more likely to have rectangles #it's writing out the coordinates of the multi-point regions that takes the longest #and then ive also gotta compare the area coordinates to the map files to work out how to convert them #and also work out how to conceptualise the rotation of the rectangles based on the transformation coords fml #hmmmm

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clanoffelidae · 10 months

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I won’t cause a fuss. I won’t cause a fuss. It happened off-site and was apologized for so causing a public kerfuffle now won’t accomplish anything. I will just be alert and aware, especially of their interactions with minors. Jesus christ that was a revelation and a half.

#trying to process the sudden realization in the past 10 minutes #that this person in my funny game is a relatively public figure in some internet spheres #and has had some inappropriate interactions with minors #not grooming by any means! as far as im aware of the situation #if i believed that were the case i would already be raising hell #but definitely has a prior record of inappropriate conduct with minors #so i will be Alert and Aware #but it was apologized for and action was taken by the offender to address the situation #so it won’t do any good to hiss and spit #i will also be looking more into the situation that occurred #as i have limited knowledge #so as to better understand this situation i have suddenly found myself in #i am that buffering cat meme rn #this post is me trying to figure out how the hell im supposed to respond to this lol #i would love to believe that they have genuinely tried to make a turn for the better #but i will remain Watchful

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mostlysignssomeportents · 11 months

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Why they're smearing Lina Khan

My god, they sure hate Lina Khan. This once-in-a-generation, groundbreaking, brilliant legal scholar and fighter for the public interest, the slayer of Reaganomics, has attracted more vitriol, mockery, and dismissal than any of her predecessors in living memory.

She sure must be doing something right, huh?

A quick refresher. In 2017, Khan — then a law student — published Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox in the Yale Law Journal. It was a brilliant, blistering analysis showing how the Reagan-era theory of antitrust (which celebrates monopolies as “efficient”) had failed on its own terms, using Amazon as Exhibit A of the ways in which post-Reagan antitrust had left Americans vulnerable to corporate abuse:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

The paper sent seismic shocks through both legal and economic circles, and goosed the neo-Brandeisian movement (sneeringly dismissed as “hipster antitrust”). This movement is a rebuke to Reaganomics, with its celebration of monopolies, trickle-down, offshoring, corporate dark money, revolving-door regulatory capture, and companies that are simultaneously too big to fail and too big to jail.

This movement has many proponents, of course — not just Khan — but Khan’s careful scholarship, combined with her encyclopedic knowledge of the long-dormant statutory powers that federal agencies had to make change, and a strategy for reviving those powers to protect Americans from corporate predators made her a powerful, inspirational figure.

When Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, he surprised everyone by appointing Khan to the FTC. It wasn’t just that she had such a radical vision — it was also that she lacked the usual corporate law experience that such an appointee would normally require (experience that would ensure that the FTC was helmed by people whose default view of the world is that it should be structured and regulated by powerful, wealthy people in corporate boardrooms).

Even more surprising was that Khan was made chair of the FTC, something that was only possible because a few Republican Senators broke with their party to support her candidacy:

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1171/vote_117_1_00233.htm

These Republicans saw in Khan an ally in their fight against “woke” Big Tech. For these senators, the problem wasn’t that tech had got too big and powerful — it was that there were a few limited instances in which tech leaders failed to wield that power in the ways they preferred.

The Republican project is a matter of getting turkeys to vote for Christmas by doing a lot of culture war bullshit, cruelly abusing disfavored sexual and racial minorities. This wins support from low-information voters who’ll vote against their class interests and support more monopolies, more tax cuts for the rich, and more cuts to the services they rely on.

But while tech leaders are 100% committed to the project of permanent oligarchic takeover of every sphere of American life, they are less full-throated in their support for hateful, cruel discrimination against disfavored minorities (in this regard, tech leaders resemble the corporate wing of the Democrats, which is where we get the “Silicon Valley is a Democratic Party stronghold” narrative).

This failure to unquestioningly and unstintingly back culture war bullshit put tech leaders in the GOP’s crosshairs. Some GOP politicians actually believe in the culture war bullshit, and are grossly offended that tech is “woke.” Others are smart enough not to get high on their own supply, but worry that any tech obstruction in the bullshit culture wars will make it harder to get sufficient turkey votes for a big fat Christmas surprise.

Biden’s ceding of antitrust policy to the left wing of the party, combined with disaffected GOP senators viewing Khan as their enemy’s enemy, led to Khan’s historic appointment as FTC Chair. In that position, she was joined by a slate of Biden trustbusters, including Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division, Tim Wu at the White House, and other important, skilled and principled fighters like Alvaro Bedoya (FTC), Rebecca Slaughter (FTC), Rohit Chopra (CFPB), and many others.

Crucially, these new appointees weren’t just principled, they were good at their jobs. In 2021, Tim Wu wrote an executive order for Biden that laid out 72 concrete ways in which the administration could act — with no further Congressional authorization — to blunt corporate power and insulate the American people from oligarchs’ abusive and extractive practices:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

Since then, the antitrust arm of the Biden administration have been fuckin’ ninjas, Getting Shit Done in ways large and small, working — for the first time since Reagan — to protect Americans from predatory businesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

This is in marked contrast to the corporate Dems’ champions in the administration. People like Pete Buttigieg are heralded as competent technocrats, “realists” who are too principled to peddle hopium to the base, writing checks they can’t cash. All this is cover for a King Log performance, in which Buttigieg’s far-reaching regulatory authority sits unused on a shelf while a million Americans are stranded over Christmas and whole towns are endangered by greedy, reckless rail barons straight out of the Gilded Age:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The contrast between the Biden trustbusters and their counterparts from the corporate wing is stark. While the corporate wing insists that every pitch is outside of the zone, Khan and her allies are swinging for the stands. They’re trying to make life better for you and me, by declaring commercial surveillance to be an unfair business practice and thus illegal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

And by declaring noncompete “agreements” that shackle good workers to shitty jobs to be illegal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

And naturally, this has really pissed off all the right people: America’s billionaires and their cheerleaders in the press, government, and the hive of scum and villainy that is the Big Law/thinktank industrial-complex.

Take the WSJ: since Khan took office, they have published 67 vicious editorials attacking her and her policies. Khan is living rent-free in Rupert Murdoch’s head. Not only that, he’s given her the presidential suite! You love to see it.

These attacks are worth reading, if only to see how flimsy and frivolous they are. One major subgenre is that Khan shouldn’t be bringing any action against Amazon, because her groundbreaking scholarship about the company means she has a conflict of interest. Holy moly is this a stupid thing to say. The idea that the chair of an expert agency should recuse herself because she is an expert is what the physicists call not even wrong.

But these attacks are even more laughable due to who they’re coming from: people who have the most outrageous conflicts of interest imaginable, and who were conspicuously silent for years as the FTC’s revolving door admitted the a bestiary of swamp-creatures so conflicted it’s a wonder they managed to dress themselves in the morning.

Writing in The American Prospect, David Dayen runs the numbers:

Since the late 1990s, 31 out of 41 top FTC officials worked directly for a company that has business before the agency, with 26 of them related to the technology industry.

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-06-23-attacks-lina-khans-ethics-reveal-projection/

Take Christine Wilson, a GOP-appointed FTC Commissioner who quit the agency in a huff because Khan wanted to do things for the American people, and not their self-appointed oligarchic princelings. Wilson wrote an angry break-up letter to Khan that the WSJ published, presaging their concierge service for Samuel Alito:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-im-resigning-from-the-ftc-commissioner-ftc-lina-khan-regulation-rule-violation-antitrust-339f115d

For Wilson to question Khan’s ethics took galactic-scale chutzpah. Wilson, after all, is a commissioner who took cash money from Bristol-Myers Squibb, then voted to approve their merger with Celgene:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4365601-Wilson-Christine-Smith-final278.html

Or take Wilson’s GOP FTC predecessor Josh Wright, whose incestuous relationship with the companies he oversaw at the Commission are so intimate he’s practically got a Habsburg jaw. Wright went from Google to the US government and back again four times. He also lobbied the FTC on behalf of Qualcomm (a major donor to Wright’s employer, George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School) after working “personally and substantially” while serving at the FTC.

George Mason’s Scalia center practically owns the revolving door, counting fourteen FTC officials among its affliates:

https://campaignforaccountability.org/ttp-investigation-big-techs-backdoor-to-the-ftc/

Since the 1990s, 31 out of 41 top FTC officials — both GOP appointed and appointees backed by corporate Dems — “worked directly for a company that has business before the agency”:

https://www.citizen.org/article/ftc-big-tech-revolving-door-problem-report/

The majority of FTC and DoJ antitrust lawyers who served between 2014–21 left government service and went straight to work for a Big Law firm, serving the companies they’d regulated just a few months before:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/The-Revolving-Door-In-Federal-Antitrust-Enforcement.pdf

Take Deborah Feinstein, formerly the head of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where she’s represented General Electric, NBCUniversal, Unilever, and Pepsi and a whole medicine chest’s worth of pharma giants before her former subordinates at the FTC. Michael Moiseyev who was assistant manager of FTC Competition is now in charge of mergers at Weil Gotshal & Manges, working for Microsoft, Meta, and Eli Lilly.

There’s a whole bunch more, but Dayen reserves special notice for Andrew Smith, Trump’s FTC Consumer Protection boss. Before he was put on the public payroll, Smith represented 120 clients that had business before the Commission, including “nearly every major bank in America, drug industry lobbyist PhRMA, Uber, Equifax, Amazon, Facebook, Verizon, and a variety of payday lenders”:

https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/andrew_smith_foia_appeal_response_11_30.pdf

Before Khan, in other words, the FTC was a “conflict-of-interest assembly line, moving through corporate lawyers and industry hangers-on without resistance for decades.”

Khan is the first FTC head with no conflicts. This leaves her opponents in the sweaty, desperate position of inventing conflicts out of thin air.

For these corporate lickspittles, Khan’s “conflict” is that she has a point of view. Specifically, she thinks that the FTC should do its job.

This makes grifters like Jim Jordan furious. Yesterday, Jordan grilled Khan in a hearing where he accused her of violating an ethics official’s advice that she should recuse herself from Big Tech cases. This is a talking point that was created and promoted by Bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-16/ftc-rejected-ethics-advice-for-khan-recusal-on-meta-case

That ethics official, Lorielle Pankey, did not, in fact, make this recommendation. It’s simply untrue (she did say that Khan presiding over cases that she has made public statements about could be used as ammo against her, but did not say that it violated any ethical standard).

But there’s more to this story. Pankey herself has a gigantic conflict of interest in this case, including a stock portfolio with $15,001 and $50,000 in Meta stock (Meta is another company that has whined in print and in its briefs that it is a poor defenseless lamb being picked on by big, mean ole Lina Khan):

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ethics-official-owned-meta-stock-while-recommending-ftc-chair-recuse-herself-from-meta-case-8582a83b

Jordan called his hearing on the back of this fake scandal, and then proceeded to show his whole damned ass, even as his GOP colleagues got into a substantive and even informative dialog with Khan:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-07-14-jim-jordan-misfires-attacks-lina-khan/

Mostly what came out of that hearing was news about how Khan is doing her job, working on behalf of the American people. For example, she confirmed that she’s investigating OpenAI for nonconsensually harvesting a mountain of Americans’ personal information:

https://www.ft.com/content/8ce04d67-069b-4c9d-91bf-11649f5adc74

Other Republicans, including confirmed swamp creatures like Matt Gaetz, ended up agreeing with Khan that Amazon Ring is a privacy dumpster-fire. Nobodies like Rep TomM assie gave Khan an opening to discuss how her agency is protecting mom-and-pop grocers from giant, price-gouging, greedflation-drunk national chains. Jeff Van Drew gave her a chance to talk about the FTC’s war on robocalls. Lance Gooden let her talk about her fight against horse doping.

But Khan’s opponents did manage to repeat a lot of the smears against her, and not just the bogus conflict-of-interest story. They also accused her of being 0–4 in her actions to block mergers, ignoring the huge number of mergers that have been called off or not initiated because M&A professionals now understand they can no longer expect these mergers to be waved through. Indeed, just last night I spoke with a friend who owns a medium-sized tech company that Meta tried to buy out, only to withdraw from the deal because their lawyers told them it would get challenged at the FTC, with an uncertain outcome.

These talking points got picked up by people commenting on Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s ruling against the FTC in the Microsoft-Activision merger. The FTC was seeking an injunction against the merger, and Corley turned them down flat. The ruling was objectively very bad. Start with the fact that Corley’s son is a Microsoft employee who stands reap massive gains in his stock options if the merger goes through.

But beyond this (real, non-imaginary, not manufactured conflict of interest), Corley’s judgment and her remarks in court were inexcusably bad, as Matt Stoller writes:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergers

In her ruling, Corley explained that she didn’t think Microsoft would abuse the market dominance they’d gain by merging their giant videogame platform and studio with one of its largest competitors. Why not? Because Microsoft’s execs pinky-swore that they wouldn’t abuse that power.

Corely’s deference to Microsoft’s corporate priorities goes deeper than trusting its execs, though. In denying the FTC’s motion, she stated that it would be unfair to put the merger on hold in order to have a full investigation into its competition implications because Microsoft and Activision had set a deadline of July 18 to conclude things, and Microsoft would have to pay a penalty if that deadline passed.

This is surreal: a judge ruled that a corporation’s radical, massive merger shouldn’t be subject to full investigation because that corporation itself set an arbitrary deadline to conclude the deal before such an investigation could be concluded. That’s pretty convenient for future mega-mergers — just set a short deadline and Judge Corely will tell regulators that the merger can’t be investigated because the deadline is looming.

And this is all about the future. As Stoller writes, Microsoft isn’t exactly subtle about why it wants this merger. Its own execs said that the reason they were spending “dump trucks” of money buying games studios was to “spend Sony out of business.”

Now, maybe you hate Sony. Maybe you hate Activision. There’s plenty of good reason to hate both — they’re run by creeps who do shitty things to gamers and to their employees. But if you think that Microsoft will be better once it eliminates its competition, then you have the attention span of a goldfish on Adderall.

Microsoft made exactly the same promises it made on Activision when it bought out another games studio, Zenimax — and it broke every one of those promises.

Microsoft has a long, long, long history of being a brutal, abusive monopolist. It is a convicted monopolist. And its bad conduct didn’t end with the browser wars. You remember how the lockdown turned all our homes into rent-free branch offices for our employers? Microsoft seized on that moment to offer our bosses keystroke-and-click level surveillance of our use of our own computers in our own homes, via its Office365 bossware product:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

If you think a company that gave your boss a tool to spy on their employees and rank them by “productivity” as a prelude to firing them or cutting their pay is going to treat gamers or game makers well once they have “spent the competition out of business,” you’re a credulous sucker and you are gonna be so disappointed.

The enshittification play is obvious: use investor cash to make things temporarily nice for customers and suppliers, lock both of them in — in this case, it’s with a subscription-based service similar to Netflix’s — and then claw all that value back until all that’s left is a big pile of shit.

The Microsoft case is about the future. Judge Corely doesn’t take the future seriously: as she said during the trial, “All of this is for a shooter videogame.” The reason Corely greenlit this merger isn’t because it won’t be harmful — it’s because she doesn’t think those harms matter.

But it does, and not just because games are an art form that generate billions of dollars, employ a vast workforce, and bring pleasure to millions. It also matters because this is yet another one of the Reaganomic precedents that tacitly endorses monopolies as efficient forces for good. As Stoller writes, Corley’s ruling means that “deal bankers are sharpening pencils and saying ‘Great, the government lost! We can get mergers through everywhere else.’ Basically, if you like your high medical prices, you should be cheering on Microsoft’s win today.”

Ronald Reagan’s antitrust has colonized our brains so thoroughly that commentators were surprised when, immediately after the ruling, the FTC filed an appeal. Don’t they know they’ve lost? the commentators said:

https://gizmodo.com/ftc-files-appeal-of-microsoft-activision-deal-ruling-1850640159

They echoed the smug words of insufferable Activision boss Mike Ybarra: “Your tax dollars at work.”

https://twitter.com/Qwik/status/1679277251337277440

But of course Khan is appealing. The only reason that’s surprising is that Khan is working for us, the American people, not the giant corporations the FTC is supposed to be defending us from. Sure, I get that this is a major change! But she needs our backing, not our cheap cynicism.

The business lobby and their pathetic Renfields have hoarded all the nice things and they don’t want us to have any. Khan and her trustbuster colleagues want the opposite. There is no measure so small that the corporate world won’t have a conniption over it. Take click to cancel, the FTC’s perfectly reasonable proposal that if you sign up for a recurring payment subscription with a single click, you should be able to cancel it with a single click.

The tooth-gnashing and garment-rending and scenery-chewing over this is wild. America’s biggest companies have wheeled out their biggest guns, claiming that if they make it too easy to unsubscribe, they will lose money. In other words, they are currently making money not because people want their products, but because it’s too hard to stop paying for them!

https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/12/ftc_cancel_subscriptions/

We shouldn’t have to tolerate this sleaze. And if we back Khan and her team, they’ll protect us from these scams. Don’t let them convince you to give up hope. This is the start of the fight, not the end. We’re trying to reverse 40 years’ worth of Reagonmics here. It won’t happen overnight. There will be setbacks. But keep your eyes on the prize — this is the most exciting moment for countering corporate power and giving it back to the people in my lifetime. We owe it to ourselves, our kids and our planet to fight one.

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/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

[Image ID: A line drawing of pilgrims ducking a witch tied to a ducking stool. The pilgrims' clothes have been emblazoned with the logos for the WSJ, Microsoft, Activision and Blizzard. The witch's face has been replaced with that of FTC chair Lina M Khan.]

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plaguedocboi · 1 month

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Recently been seeing a lot of people (likely terfs) trying to start Hot New Asexual Discourse such as “you can’t call yourself asexual and *insert some other orientation label*” and “minors can’t identify as asexual because they’re children and they shouldn’t experience attraction yet anyway” and even “you guys just think you’re asexual because you’re autistic and socially awkward, just get off tumblr and go talk to people” and I would like to remind everyone that although this is extremely annoying I desperately need you all to just report and block them. Don’t debate them don’t give them attention and don’t give their bullshit “discourse” any kind of audience. Let them seethe about us existing in their little terf-sphere and ignore them.

#asexual #don’t engage with them and they’ll eventually get bored and go away #aphobia

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miryum · 2 months

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☆ 18+ minors dni ☆

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who comes over to your house just at first to get away from Crime Alley and his parents. Your parents welcome him with open arms and encourage him to come over because they don’t want to see him stuck at home with abusive and addicted parents

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who doesn't think much of you at first – you’re just another person in his sphere of knowledge. You’re just the little sister of his best friend and someone else who sits at the dinner table when he stays over

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who begins to notice you once you enter high school after him and your brother. His place in your family is becoming more solidified as the years go on and as his father is sent to prison

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who begins to tease you when he comes over to hang out with your brother. He begins to ask offhandedly where you are and seems a bit disappointed whenever you’re out with friends or at an extracurricular

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who tags along to see all of your performances or sporting events or concerts and sends you a little smirk after each one, congratulating you along with the rest of your family

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who slowly becomes more integrated into your world and who you begin to notice – not as simply one of your brother's friends, but as a potential crush as high school continues

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who makes sure to smile at you in the hallway during passing times and who never acts like the stuck-up upperclassman who’s too good for you (even if that’s how your brother acts)

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who begins to routinely flirt with you whenever he comes over. Snide little comments like “Y/n knows what I’m talking about” and “Princess, you want me to proofread your essay? Lord knows you need it” with that infuriating smirk

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who gets a glow-up over the summer between 11th and 12th year and sends your little 10th grade heart beating wildly

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who sees this and sends a simple wink your way

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who spends sleepless nights debating whether he should act on his feelings or if he was just being creepy thinking about an underclassman

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who can never explain why he doesn't go on any dates anymore and stays stubbornly single even when your brother begins to date more steadily

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who won’t ever admit that thoughts of you on your family vacation to the lake that he was invited on, wearing your swimsuit, water dripping down your body after he threw you in the lake, enter his mind when he has his hand down his pants

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who cheekily asks you if you have a date to his senior prom, heart actually beating in his chest, worried you would just see him as a friend of your brother’s

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who picks you up in a handsome suit and tie, hair coiffed and jaw dropped when you hurry down the stairs in your prom dress, your mom gushing over you two. Your brother’s brows furrow slightly when he sees Jason’s blush and wide eyes, but doesn’t say anything of it

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who makes sure he’s the only one who dances with you at prom and brushes aside any glances of a senior and sophomore together. There are other sophomores there, but usually in a friend group comprising of both juniors and sophomores

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who corners you after prom before school, beginning the conversation all smooth and suave with “how’d you like being on my arm last night, sweetheart?” but by the end of the conversation he’s a bashful little boy, stuttering out how he knows he’s a senior and going off to college soon, but also really likes you and was wondering if you wanted to go out to a movie or get ice cream later

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who tells your brother he’s officially dating someone, but doesn’t say who. Never mind that you’ve been coming home more happy and blushing

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who, once he turns 18, gets a little nervous that people will think of him as a paedophile. He worries that once he goes off to college, you’ll forget about him and move onto a “younger” man (even though Jason’s only two years older and is going to Gotham University so he’ll still be close by)

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who takes you out on the weekend of your seventeenth birthday (you told your parents your friends were taking you out, which wasn’t lying, per se) and treats you how he always thought you should be treated

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who books you two a hotel room that night and positively keens at the idea of taking your virginity

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who lays you down on the hotel bed and takes his lovely time with you. Whenever you mutter, “if my brother finds out…” he rewards you with a little swat to the thigh and replies, “I don’t wanna be thinking about your brother right now”

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who finds that sweet spot behind your earlobe and a million other sweet spots all while circling your clit over your underwear. “Oh, sweetheart, look at how wet you are for me,” he coos and when you blush, he kisses your cheeks and says, “no, no, it shows me how much you want me”

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who gets addicted to your pussy. He decides that your pussy ruined all other pussies when you clenched around him; but what really did it for him was that little whimper you made, murmuring out his name, when he first pushed into you, bottoming out

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who makes sure you spend the rest of the weekend trapped in his arms, his body braced above yours. He treats you to a bubble bath and kisses and cuddles afterwards, gently massaging your clit, another hand cupping your breast

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who drives you back home and finally has to confront your brother, who’s standing, cross armed, in the doorway of your home

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who carefully explains the situation to your brother, making sure your brother knows you were fully consenting, and even then, if there was any blame to place, it would be on him. Your brother finally relents on the condition that he would beat Jason up if he ever hurt his younger sister. Jason replies, “you won’t have to worry about that. If I ever hurt her, I’ll beat myself up”

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who makes time on weekends and in between college courses to visit you and who even “helps” you with homework (i.e. distracts you by pressing lazy, open mouth kisses on your neck from behind as you try to study)

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who spends even more time at your house now, an arm around your shoulders and kissing your forehead every three seconds. Your parents are much more chill with Jason dating you than your brother and officially think of him as part of the family

Brother’s Best Friend!Jason Todd who, by the time he’s picked out the engagement ring, your dad is already calling him “son”

#miryum's dc universe #jason todd x reader #jason todd x y/n #jason todd #headcanon #brothers best friend #hear me out here #we love jason todd #age gap?#dc x reader #dcu #dc comics #jason todd didn't die #not proofread

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