#top 3 books 2023
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top 3 favorite books i read in 2023!
3. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
timid, shy, insecure protagonist who does NOT try to get between her crush and the girl he's going for, has a wonderful relationship with her older brother, and ultimately just wants to be loved and accepted by those around her.
her return to her parents' home is realistically heartbreaking. it isn't that anyone is mean to Fanny - they ignore her.
the entire play fiasco is so juicy and fun to read!!
we get to witness the romantic interest go through his own fall and redemption arc & we as the audience have to sit back and just watch him grow and find himself rather than be alongside him, which is simultaneously frustrating yet a unique experience :)
i honestly thought that henry could have his own redemption arc & was surprised when he instead fell again...this time harder than before...the drama.......
2. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
sad, lonely, traumatized protagonist who is also such a badass. she will not tell us what tragedies she has had to face....so mysterious... i love her
she literally moves to a foreign country where she doesn't speak the language & doesn't have credentials to teach and she just....learns the language and becomes a teacher. she gains respect from the students and staff even if she is still a bit of an outcast
the nun subplot.....so fun and supernatural and the truth of who the nun is was just so damn funny
the graham reveal!!!
the way lucy is treated when she experiences depression, loneliness, and anxiety is so necessary and realistic for her character & all that she's gone through. the way others react to her sucks but is true to the time; it allows us to see how mental health (especially that of women) was treated. no, happiness is not a potato, graham!
the banter & dialogue is so funny and realistic - i love the black cat x delusional vain sunshine dynamic of lucy and ginerva. also the reading shakespeare scene, the 'call me your friend' scene, the whole getting shut up in the attic for hours to practice acting scene, the drug trip, the time she refused to give paul his gift in order to piss him off, and the showdown between lucy and madame beck are such memorable moments that make me laugh out loud or gasp or smile :)
i sobbed at the end. literally sobbed.
1. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
yet another protagonist who is insecure, paranoid, wants so badly to be loved and preferred and noticed, and has a massive inferiority complex.
identity, names, influence, public perception, and reputation are unbelievably important. maxim vs. max, who the "real" or "true" mrs. de winter is, the fact that everything in the house (from meals to portraits to how a desk is arranged) has rebecca's touch all over it, down to the fact that we don't even know the protagonist's first name!
omfg the mystery and suspense and drama and tension is unbelievable. every time she turns a corner, every time she answers the phone, every time she goes outside or visits a family member or talks to a servant or her sister-in-law or even brushes her hair there is so much tension and anxiety and self-consciousness
du maurier's writing is immaculate; i could read her describe paint drying and it would be beautiful
the evening of the costume party is so fucking amazing. the initial rejection and drama is so so good, but i love the rest of the evening even more i think. the way her soul seems to truly die while she keeps a smile on her face and greets her guests, so anxious to be as good of a host as rebecca.....i've never read anything like it. and the morning after...she's so sure that everything is over with maxim & there is no hope and i can feel her despair...
the confession...so incredible. i didn't see it coming and i had no idea what the narrator was going to do, how she'd react. "time and tide wait for no man"...
once the boat is found and there are people suspecting there may be foul play and rebecca's cousin is there and mrs. danvers is suspicious and the narrator faints and they're calling the doctor that rebecca went to - the tension and suspense was so good.
this book got me thinking about perception for days. we are told details that allegedly describe the same story, but many aspects don't line up & we are never given the full, perfect truth. what was rebecca really like? was she really as hedonistic and vain and self-serving as we're told? did maxim ever love her? did she ever love him? did she plan to run away with favell? did strangers think her lovely and wonderful simply because of her beauty or because she actually was a good person? even if she wasn't a good person, did she deserve what happened to her? was maxim justified in getting upset with her and/or putting up with her alleged behavior? who is rebbeca truly?
i'm obsessed.
#favorite books#best books of 2023#top 3 books 2023#jane austen#charlotte bronte#daphne du maurier#mansfield park#villette#rebecca
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my top 10 posts of 2023!
1. 1,535 notes - Sep 28 2023
2. 506 notes - Aug 16 2023
3. 489 notes - Feb 7 2023
4. 214 notes - Jan 26 2023
5. 212 notes - Mar 2 2023
6. 198 notes - Apr 1 2023
7. 161 notes - Aug 30 2023
8. 145 notes - May 1 2023
9. 137 notes - Nov 17 2023
10. 131 notes - Jan 8 2023
Created by TumblrTop10
#tumblrtop10#jetblackcode#long post#lonely dog speaks#not art#thanks for all the enthusiastic & nice tags on my art as always :•3#body horror/#tumblr year in review#<- did they not do this for 2023??#i know there was general posts for top books and movies etc. but i didn't see any links for the review on a personal blog level#so this is the closest thing i can think of#wow there's 2 eskew posts in here!#and zero of my OCs skjhfskdhs although i don't remember posting them very often#2023
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tagged by my dears @sofhtie and @silkchiffon for my top 9 books of 2023 or 9 books to be read in 2024! will be doing the latter:
- the private life of sherlock holmes by vincent starrett (currently reading this one!)
- clothing the colony: nineteenth-century philippine sartorial culture, 1820-1896 by stephanie marie r coo
- secrets of automata by michael start
- the master and margarita by mikhail bulgakov
- the adventures of sherlock holmes: detecting social order by rosemary jann
- the horse and his boy by cs lewis
- british detective fiction 1891-1901: the successors to sherlock holmes by clare clarke
- observations by gaslight by lyndsay faye
- taste of control: food and the filipino colonial mentality under american rule by r alexander d orquiza jr
tagging @saccharinarocks @solarotters @gluegunshots @lambentplume ! no pressure though
#this is all very predictable of me i think#text#also my top 3 books of 2023 were bending the willow; hound of the baskervilles; automata the golden age#i read mostly holmes short stories last year rather than full Books. also read a decent amount of comics
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Top Fives and Threes
Top five movies watched for the first time in 2023:
Godzilla Minus One
Suspiria 2018
No Country for Old Men
The Menu
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Top 5 TV Series consumed this year:
The Newsreader
Better Call Saul
The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart
Bodies
The Last of Us
Top 3 Video Games played this year:
Fallout 76
Cyberpunk 2077
Subnautica
Top 3 Books read this year:
Countdown City (The Last Policeman #2)
Navigator (Time's Tapestry #3)
Doctor Who: Scratchman
#no particular order#I don't think any book's really moved me this year. and also my reading output was curtailed by my migraines#VGs just based on enjoyment#Television was where it was really at#The 1-2 punch of newsreader and bcs#movies also v good but the latter a lot are done in um a haze of migraines and other drug#non specific orders#top 5#top 3#2023 in review
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just out of curiosity I saved all of my worldbuilding slideshows as plain text then copied the text into a text editor that actually has a word count function, and it was too long to even put in one document without getting an error gfhvhvh... total is 323,390, and this doesn’t count the additional ones I’m not done with yet but am waiting on... these are just the like 5 slideshows I’m working on turning into videos... e v i l
#NO WONDER IT TAKES me so long to film edit and record all of my reading these powerpoints.. I'm like.. basically making an audio book of#novel length text#actually looking it up a lot of novels are like 80.000 - 150.000 words so this is like.. maybe 2-3 novels#read audibly then edited in video and so on and do forth#*so forth#Which like . I know this. I'm aware of this. that like.... I have typed a lot of text about my world and stuff like that#but just knowing in your head that its a lot vs. seeing actual numbers is like .. oughh#especially knowing that it's all stuff to read out loud or whatever and make into videos.#If I counted all the other random stuff like documents on my computer or whaterver that I'm not actually using in anything at this point...#anyway still not making much progress on the slideshow reading videos at the moment since I've been feeling sick still and#Having Problems as always unfortunately. but it's something I still really really want to get done near the beginning of the year#at least so its not an everlooming burden task of like.. insurmountable purportions#I just have to chip away at recording bit by bit lol.#on top of all the other things. I still have costumes I want to do and etc. T o T#I wish health problems didn't throw off my productivity so much but.. alas.. my body cannot cope with pain signals and stuff well#even a minor problem sends it into Uh Oh mode and then I can't focus on anything else. I am.. trying.. though aaaaa#slowly working through my 'to get done before 2023' todo list . even though it's already nearly february lol#maybe I'll finish the list by march hjbhj ***#Being usually about 2 months behind on my goals sounds about right.
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My Experience Buying eSIMs for Gaza by Maia Kobabe
instagram / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my books
Full transcript below the cut:
Cover:
My Experience Buying eSIMs for Gaza
Project organized by @ connectinghumanity_
by Maia Kobabe @redgoldsparks
Page 1
In Fall 2023, I saw instructions on instagram for how to purchase an eSIM card and submit it to be distributed to someone in Gaza.
Download an eSIM app-> Select Middle East as the region-> Purchase-> Screenshot the QR code-> Do not activate-> send to [email protected]
Image of Maia looking at eir phone. “That sounds easy, I’ll buy one.”
I emailed an Airalo eSIM QR code to gazaesims on Nov 17 2023.
Page 2
By January 2024, it hadn’t been activated yet. I bought a second one from Nomad and sent my new QR code and resubmitted my old one.
Image of Maia looking at eir phone. “How long does this usually take, I wonder?”
By February neither had been activated, but Connecting Humanity kept posting about needing more. I bought a second Nomad and resubmitted all of them on February 15, 2024.
Page 3
The Nomad eSIMs are much cheaper than Airalo, but what I didn’t realize is that they expire even if they haven’t been activated. At the end of February I decided to try a third company, Simly. Here’s a price comparison:
AIRALO: $39 USD for 3GB, never expires
SIMLY: $22 USD for 3GB, never expires
NOMAD: $16 USD for 3GB, expires after 8 weeks even if unused, only offers in-app refunds
Page 4
Connecting Humanity asks folks to wait at least 3 weeks before resending a QR code that hasn’t been activated yet. On March 7 Mirna Elhelbawi posted:
We send EVERY esim we receive. Bear in mind that we are dealing with people at a war zone. They might take it and get killed before activating it, they might take it and their phone gets lost or destroyed. They might take it and search for days for stable internet connection to activate it, and some of them activate it unsuccessfully due to lack of knowledge and the horrific situations they are in. ~Connecting Gaza
By early April, my first Nomad eSIM expired unused. I resubmitted my three remaining eSIMs.
Page 5
Suddenly, two of my eSIMs were activated on the same day! The Airalo I’d purchased 4.5 months earlier and my second Nomad.
Image of Maia looking happy and surprised.
Image of Maia looking very intensely at eir phone. “I have to make sure these don’t run out!”
I began buying top-up packages immediately.
Page 6
I felt like I had planted a seed in the fall and waited all winter for it to sprout. Seeing it activated was like watching the first new leaves break the soil.
Image of Maia with a watering can labeled “data”, sprinkling water on two little sprouts. “Watering my eSIMs!”
Sadly, only .07 GB of data was ever used on my Nomad. It was never used again after that first day.
Page 7
But my Airalo has been in constant use for over a month now. I check on it every day.
I will never know the person I am buying data for and they will never know me. But we are connected by the same strings of hope and grief that connect us all.
Image of two hands holding a phone, which is connected to a flying kite.
Page 8
On April 5, 2024 Connecting Humanity reported they had sent more than 250,000 eSIMs to Gaza, equivalent to approximately $6.3 million donated! You can visit gazaesims.com for more info, instructions, and discounts. Here are my referral codes:
MAIA5367 for $3 off Airalo
MB772 for $3 off Simly
MAIA66GF for $3 off Nomad
If you need more incentive, the Cartoonist Coop is doing art rewards. Visit cartoonist.coop/esims4gaza
Page 9
Image of Maia, weighing two options. “Buying an eSIM is easy and can make a very direct impact. It can also take a lot of patience and could get expensive over time if you commit to keeping the eSIM topped up indefinitely.”
If an immediate one time donation is more your speed, I recommend Operation Olive Branch and Gazafunds, two places to find Gofundmes aiding Palestinian families.
gazafunds.com
@ operationolivebranch on insta
linktr.ee/opolivebranch
-Maia Kobabe 2024
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All the books I read in 2023
from most recent to least recent <3
here you can find everything i read in:
2021 & 2022
#book blogging#books 2023#bookblr#yayyy my fav post of the year !#so many amazing reads this year#but id say my top favs are gathering moss#clytemnestra#and juniper & thorn#hard not to name another 5 but yeah#top 3
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Riding a Dark Horse Halloween with these Trio of Releases
The big reason why I love celebrating #Halloween with @darkhorsecomics is because they offer frightful stories that's worth revisiting time and time again. My top 3 list is at:
This publisher never fails to knock it out of the park with their themed All Hallow’s Eve releases, and I’m always excited to check out what they got every year. If there was a way to rename the tradition to a Dark Horse Halloween, I’ll be voting it in! Ever since they released The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings (2003), Witchcraft (2004), Dead (2005), Monsters (2006)–four different anthologies–to…
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I keep seeing posts talking about the WGA/Sag-Aftra strike, which yes, good, but in all this "support writers" sentiment I'm seeing no one talk about book writers, which I think is something people should know more about right now.
We are at an all-time high for book bans, namely targeting queer & PoC-authored books. This means that a lot of schools and libraries are no longer stocking diverse YA books, and if you're not in publishing, you may not realize this but school & libraries are by far one of the biggest markets for diverse YA books.
This means that in 2023, YA book sales are down. This is also in part because Barnes & Noble (the largest physical book retailer in the U.S.) is no longer really stocking YA hardcovers. This means that marginalized authors and debut authors are struggling to sell books.
But it's a LOT worse than that. In the past couple of years, marginalized authors are *really* struggling to get new book deals. Most books are acquired by a publisher about 2 years before they release to the public, so this isn't all that noticeable yet, but a LOT of marginalized authors I've spoken to (myself included) have been unable to sell a new YA book since 2020. So while I had a book out last year, even if I sell one right now, you won't see it until 2025-2026. That's three to four years without a new release or the income I get from publishing those books.
On top of that, Big 5 publishers have started closing imprints (namely their diverse imprints) and have started telling their marginalized YA authors to just go. I've had multiple authors tell me their publisher basically said, "eh, we don't care to put in the work for you anymore. You can just go somewhere else". Of the authors who *are* getting offered new contracts, we're being offered pay far below the cost of living and we're being handed contracts that split our payments 4 or 5 ways and require we sign over our work to be used to train AI so they can replace us a few years down the road.
Authors are freelancers who own our IPs, which means we can't unionize the way Hollywood writers can, and despite authors showing up in droves to support HarperCollins employees when they went on strike for fair wages, we're being hung out to dry when it comes to our own rights.
If you enjoy diverse books, especially diverse YA, please understand that many of the authors you loved over the past 3-5 years are being forced out of the industry. We're being exploited, and we have no way to defend ourselves. Our books sales are drying up thanks to anti-queer legislation, our rights are being eaten up by AI, and our publishers are degrading us while profiting of us and refusing to share those profits with us.
Within the publishing industry, we've all been watching this decline happen over the last decade, but outside of it, I know most people have no idea what's going on so please spread the word. And if you care about diverse books especially in YA, please support marginalized authors in any way you can. The industry needs to be reminded that it needs us before we're all eliminated from it.
#Books#diverse books#author#publishing#sag aftra#writers strike#writers#labor rights#workers rights#wga strike
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Box Office / May 19-21, 2023
5.21.23
Good Evening…Fast X is the new champ for the box office with a total of $67.5M. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Super Mario Bros Movie, Book Club: The Next Chapter, and Evil Dead Rise round out the top five. Here is the rest of the list.
Credit source: IMDb & Box Office Mojo
Top Box Office (US)
Weekend of May 19 – 21, 2023
TitleWeekendGrossWeeksFast X$67.5M$67.5M1Guardians of the…
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#Book Club: The Next Chapter#Box Office Mojo#cinema#domestic box office#Evil Dead Rise#Fast X#film#global box office#Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3#IMDb#international box office#May 2023#North American box office#slider#The Super Mario Bros Movie#top five
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"Our Little Ones" Collection
Hi beloved simmers!
I'm finally here. I'm sorry the set is delayed again. When I look at your supportive comments, although these delays are not a problem for you, I still feel bad.
The set contains a total of 50 items for infants, toddlers, kids and pets. Although there are mostly items for kids, there are also a nice amount of items for the rest. I also tried to do elements on the set that I hadn't seen on the sim before. It's like a Pillow Fort, a Tea Party Set, a Pet House that can be embedded in the wall. I would have loved to have made the tea party functional. But it's functional as a dollhouse. So it might look like your little sims are having a tea party with their toys.
My inspiration on the set was the Pottery Barn's Catalina set. Of course, since everything I wanted was not available in this set, I designed many things myself.
The items included in the set are below:
Babies (Infants and Toddlers)
2 types of Toddler Beds
Bedding for Toddler Beds
2 types of Cribs
Changing Station
Drawer Chest
Dresser
Extra-Wide Dresser
High Chair
Nightstand
Potty Chair
Rocking Chair (Growing Together Required)
Wall Mirror
Kids
4 types of Single Beds
4 types of Double Beds
2 types of Bunk Beds *
Bedding for Single Beds
Bedding for Double Beds
Bedding for Bunk Beds *
Bookcase
2 types of Books for Bookcase
Chair with Backpack
Desk Storage
Desk Storage with Hutch
Desk Storage with Smart Hutch
Decor for Desk Storage with Hutch
Writing Desk
Dresser
Nightstand
Shelves
Skateboard with Books
Tea Party Set
Toy Box
Pillow Fort ** (Dream Home Decorator Required)
Wardrobe
Pets (Cats and Dogs Required)
Pets Bowl ***
Cat Tree
Pet House
Litter Box
Pet Bed ****
Scratch Post
* If the bunks cannot be used by your sim, please place them as follows.
1. Place top bunk bedding
2. Place bottom bedding
3. Place frames
** I recommend that you reduce the size by 1 when placing the pillow fort. You can also use the normal size. Fully optional.
*** When you fill the food into the pet bowl, the bowl on the far right fills with water.
**** I wanted to make this item in pet size, but it became a regular loveseat size. I don't know how it happened.
I hope you like it and it's worth the wait. 💖💖💖
Special thanks to one of my favorite CC creator @myshunosun for fabric texture ❤️
Bedding patterns:
Kids Pattern Vectors by Vecteezy
Animals Vectors by Vecteezy
Animals Vectors by Vecteezy
Animals Vectors by Vecteezy
Animals Vectors by Vecteezy
Animals Vectors by Vecteezy
Animals Vectors by Vecteezy
Summer Pattern Vectors by Vecteezy
Animals Vectors by Vecteezy
Public Release: October 9, 2023
AVAILABLE FOR EVERYONE!
DOWNLOAD AT:
CURSEFORGE
PATREON
#sims4cc#the sims 4 custom content#the sims 4 cc#the sims cc#sims4#ts4 simblr#simblr#simblur#simblog#maxis match cc#sims 4 cc#sims4 cc#ts4 maxis cc#ts4 cc#ts4cc#ts4 download#sims 4 maxis match#maxismatch#maxis match#sims 4 custom content#ts4 build#children#sims 4#the sims 4#the sims#thesims4cc#taurusdesign#Instagram Hashtags#simmer#sims
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tumblrinas i’ve found an apartment that seems pretty perfect for me <3 i’m going to organise a viewing tomorrow and See What’s Up i’m so excited and terrified
#it accepts benefits as rent and is near the city centre and the rent itself is pretty cheap for what it is#it's a little one bedroom on the top floor of an old townhouse and i have hope for it <3#even if it doesn't work out i have a meeting booked with a charity that supports autistic people with living independently and stuff#my goal is to be moved out by the new year#by 2023 i'll (hopefully) be living in my own apartment in the city with my first play published and available for licensing#i'm trying to be in my moving too fast tl5y era as opposed to the climbing uphill i've been in lately
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Grill the Kid
Synopsis: Y/n is the favorite for Grill the Grid. A few of the 2023 episodes are a reminder why.
young female driver reader x 2023 F1 Grid
A/N: a couple things; team doesn’t really matter here, I’m just using the drivers shown in the videos. i’m also using a challenge from previous years to make it more interesting
Grill the Grid Episode 1: Driver Heights
You walk in to see a tall easel. “Oh, what’s this for?” You ask Rosanna, the host of the games.
“We’ve got a heigh chart and magnets with all the driver’s names on them. And you’ve got to place them in height order in two minutes”
You nod. “I can do that”
“You ready? 3, 2, 1, go”
“Okay, how am I gonna do this?” You say, asking no one in specific.
“Let’s just do this in order I see them- actually, wait” You search for two names specifically, then slap one at the very top, the other at the bottom.
“We’re gonna put Yuki right below my name, he’s not as tall as me, but he’s close”
“Then...um...who’s the next tallest? Estie or Alex?” You look to Rosanna as if she can tell you.
“We’ll do Estie, Alex, then, Stroll, I guess? Lance is pretty tall, he can go right there” You flip through the magnets in your hands, eyebrows furrowed.
“Should we do shortest to tallest then? That might be easier”
“Lando is, of course, a midget and belongs all the way down there” You crouch, placing your friend’s name at the bottom with a grin.
“Who else is short? Fernando and Checo, they’re pretty short. I think Fernando is shorter than Checo, though”
“Umm, Lewis isn’t that tall, oh! Neither is Valtteri, sorry Valtteri. KMag, he’s also not super tall”
“I think from then on, everyone else is kinda similar in height- actually no, Pierre thinks that he’s tall, he’s not”
“Max- is Max tall? He might be, he’s just not tall in my mind. We’ll put him in the middle. Charles, we’ll put him right next to Max” A cheeky smile suddenly comes on to your face.
“Zhou is kinda tall, maybe, but we’ll put him below Charles and Max”
“Oscar? See, again he’s not tall in my mind, but he might actually be tall, so I don’t know. I’ll put him above Zhou but below Charles and Max, that might work”
“Carlos, uh, he can be tall, we’ll put him above right below Charles and Max”
“Oh, Hulk! He’s tall, Nico’s tall, we’ll put him below Alex and in front of Lance”
“Last person is Logan, he’s tall, I think, not that tall though, maybe below Lance” You place the last name on the chart.
“Okay, I’m done, I did great, but you can tell me what you think is wrong, anyways” you say jokingly, smiling at Rosanna.
“So, Y/n, I’m sorry to tell you but you are not the tallest on the grid” Rosanna says in front of you, fake sympathy on her face.
“What do you mean? Of course I am, I tower above everyone, clearly” You gesture to yourself.
“Okay then, well, Yuki is not the second tallest” The woman says as you shake your head.
“Rosie, I don’t know what you see, but Yuki is almost as tall as me” You look up to see her sighing.
“Are you really not going to change it?”
“There’s nothing to change” You smile, shrugging. “Alright then. Esteban is the-“ She pauses, then plays along with your game. “The third tallest” You smile successfully.
“Then in your books, I guess, Alex is the fourth tallest, and George- what did George do to you that made you put him on the bottom?”
“He’s George, that’s enough sometimes” You see Rosanna face palm, then ask again, “You’re not going to change his?”
“Nope” You shake your head. “Okay- moving on, you got Nico and Lance right. Max is actually taller than Logan, then goes Charles- are you not going to change them either?” She exclaims, exhasperated already.
“No” you say simply. She sighs. “So Charles, you got Oscar and Carlos wrong, Oscar is taller than Carlos”
“Really? He’s taller than Carlos? Okay, I’ll move them”
“Pierre goes right below Carlos, then Kevin-” You cut her off. “Actually? Wow, I was wrong”
“Yes, somehow” Rosanna rolls her eyes playfully.“Then comes Zhou, he’s shorter than KMag, then Lewis, he’s taller than Sergio. Checo is taller than Valtteri, then Fernando, and then Lando”
She finishes, refraining from voicing her opinion about yours and Yuki’s heights. “So I got them all right!” You exclaim, grinning. “Sure Y/n, you got them all right”
Grill the Grid Episode 2: Geography
“Alright, here we go” You walk into the studio, greeting Rosanna and everyone else behind the cameras as you go. “What’re we doing today?” You ask, standing on the mark on the floor.
Rosanna smirks, and you know this isn’t going to go well. “Geography”
Your face falls.
“In fifteen seconds”
Your jaw drops.
“Oh my god, I hate this game”
She hands you the clipboard. “You ready?”
“No” You deadpan.
“Okay, 3, 2, 1, go” She ignores you and starts the timer.
And then you’re dotting the paper frantically, your eyes trying to keep up with your hands. “Ten seconds”
“Shut up” you say dryly, but you’re grinning.
“Where’s Monaco?” You mutter.
“Five seconds”
“No”
“Time’s up” she tells you, the alarm going off in front of you.
“Wait” Your eyes quickly scanning the paper. “Okay, I’m done” You look up.
“The timer’s been off for like, ten seconds” Rosanna laughs.
“Oh well”
“Okay, Y/n, show me what you’ve done” You grin, turning the clipboard around to reveal a messily dotted paper.
“Oh my”
“Good, right?”
“It’s certainly something”
“Yeah, something amazing”
“Sure, Y/n. Tell me what it’s supposed to be”
“Okay so, we have Miami, Texas, Las Vegas” You point to the US on the map.
“You’ve got that bit right”
“Then Mexico, and Montreal is somewhere up here” You gesture to Canada. “Not where Mexico City or Montreal are, but I’ll give you the point”
“Australia, Brazil, and the UK”
“Yeah, then what’s the mess on the rest of Europe?” You grin. “There’s Russia, Singapore is like, down here”
“Russia’s right, Singapore isn’t”
You give her a look. “What? You got them wrong!”
“How am I supposed to win if you tell me I get them wrong?”
“Maybe you won’t win then. C’mon-”
You cut her off. “Are you doubting my skills? Fine, I’ll show you. Japan is here-”
“No it’s not”
“This is Italy”
“That one’s right”
“Belgium is here”
“Nope”
“This is the Netherlands”
“Switzerland, actually”
“That’s Bahrain” Rosanna shakes her head. “It’s not”
“Saudia Arabia is here”
“That’s right”
“See, I told you I know my stuff” You tap your head with the marker and grin.
“You’ve got like six wrong”
“That’s Baku”
“Not even close”
“And then there’s Monaco” “You did get that one” You smile proudly.
“Spain”
“Yeah”
“Austria?”
“You were on a streak! Not Austria”
“Hungary”
“You are back to being wrong”
“Qatar”
“Yes, that’s Qatar”
“And Abu Dhabi” You finish.
“And no. Congrats Y/n, you got 14/23 right”
“Yeah, I always get it right”
“I- okay Y/n”
Grill the Grid Episode 3: Youngest to Oldest
“Hi” You sing-song as you walk into the studio and on the mark on the floor.
“Today Y/n, you’re going to put the drivers on the grid in their age order, from the youngest at the top and oldest at the bottom. You have two minutes” Rosanna says, giving you 20 magnets with each driver’s name on them.
“Are you ready?” She asks as you flip through each name.
“Yeah, why not”
“3, 2, 1, go”
“Alright this is gonna be easy. Let’s find oldest and youngest first, so me, I go at the very top, and then... Fernando right here, goes all the way to the bottom” You turn to grin at the camera.
“I believe Oscar is the next youngest, and then Logan? He’s besties with Oscar and that means they’re the same age so yeah, Logan”
You flip through a few more, and suddenly pause.“Um, how old is Zhou? He’s gotta be like, 21? 22? We’ll put him above Logan”
“Then Lando, oh and Yuki, he turned 22 or 23 a few months ago?” You know you’re not getting any answers, you never do, but you ask anyway.
“Or maybe they’re the same age! Yeah, let’s go with that, Lando and Yuki same age”
“Then... Okay, this isn’t easy, who’s next? How old is Charles? I’m gonna say 25 because he’s definitely not 26 and I don’t think anyone is younger than him. So, Charles, I think Pierre because again, they’re besties and that means they’re the same age- or no, Pierre is like, a little older”
“And Max, he’s young, he’s 25 so- oh no”
“Is Pierre older than Max?”
“How old is- Pierre is 26 right? So it goes Chares, Max, then Pierre”
“No because how old is Alex? He’s gotta be like 25 right? He can’t be- how old is George?”
“Oh my god, because see, in my mind, George is like 27 but I know-”
You pause.
“I don't think that’s true so- but how old is Alex?”
“Oh jeez” You cover your face with your hands.
“Alright, let’s do me, Oscar, Logan, Zhou, Lando and Yuki, Alex, Charles, George, Max, Pierre, and then Esteban to top it all off. That makes sense”
“That brings us to like 26-wait! How old is Lance?” You groan and throw your hands up.
“He’s either 24, 25, or 26. We’ll put him in front of Pierre and behind Estie” You look at your work and nod.
“And Carlos! He’s like 27, maybe, so after Esteban, probably”
“Yeah, okay, I think after that no one else is in their twenties, so thirties”
“KMag is 31 I think, Checo is- Checo's on the younger side, 33 or like, 35, I don’t know”
“Bottas is somewhere in between, low thirties I’m gonna say, so after Checo”
“Then Hulk, I think he’s 35 actually, so we’ll put him in front of Valtteri” 
“And then Lewis right under Fernando. Wow, that was easy, I’m so good at this game” You place the last magnet and turn to grin at Rosanna.
“So, you got the first three right, but Yuki is the fourth youngest, then Lando, and then Zhou”
“I was close”
“Then Lance, George, and Charles”
You make a face. “Not so good then”
“Next goes Max, Esteban, and Alex”
“And you got the last seven correct, so you did okay”
“I think I should get extra points for trying though”
“No, Y/n”
(I only did 3 episodes because these were the only ones that I could really make a story out of, so… the end)
#formula 1#reader insert#driver reader#f1 grid x reader#platonic f1 grid#grill the grid#2023 f1 season#f1 2023 grid x y/n#f1 2023#f1 x reader
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I wrote a 12 page epilogue to my 2019 comic "Harry Potter and The Problematic Author" because I found, in 2023, that I had more to say. You can also find this comic on my website, and I have PDF copies available on etsy. I may sell print copies at some point in the future.
instagram / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my book / redbubble
Full transcript below the cut.
PAGE 1
Part one: Ruddy Owls!
I was in fourth grade when the first Harry Potter Book was released in the US.
Panel 1: Sometimes our teacher would read it aloud in class. “Mr and Mrs Dursley of number 4 Privat Drive were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much…”
Panel 2: I was 11 years old when Harry Potter finally broke through my dyslexia and turned me into a reader.
Panel 3: Every night in the summer before sixth grade I waited for the owl carrying my Hogwarts Letter. I cried when it didn’t come. “I have to go to Muggle school!”
PAGE 2
Part Two: Hats
I dedicated myself to being a fan.
Panel 1: I began collecting Harry Potter News article.
Panel 2: I asked my relatives to mail me ones from their local papers. I filled a thick binder with clippings.
Panel 3: I wrote my own trivia quiz
Panel 4: and participated in the one held annually at the county fair. “Next contestant!”
Panel 5: I usually got into one of. the top five spots. I won boxes of candy, posters, stationary, and once a baseball cap. (Hat reads: I survived the battle of Hogwarts).
Panel 6: In high school I sewed a black velvet cape and knitted many stripped scarves.
PAGE 3
Part Three: Double Trouble
Watching the last film in 2011 felt like the final note of my childhood.
Panel 1: I remember driving home from the midnight showing thinking about the end of 13 years of waiting; wondering what would define the next chapter of my life.
Panel 2: That same month I heard of something called Pottermore. “Okay, so there’s a sorting quiz… I already know my house! Patronus assignment? Mine’s a barn owl. Duh!"
Panel 3: You can read the books again but with GIFs? Why?
Panel 4: I lived in a place with very slow and limited internet at the time. Pottermore sounded inaccessible, but also boring. I never joined.
Panel 5: "I’ll just read the actual books again, thanks."
PAGE 4
Part Four: Sweets
In 2016, a series of short stories titled "History of Magic in North America” were released on Pottermore to pave the way for the first Fantastic Beasts Film. These stories display an extreme ignorance of American history, culture, and geography, but the worst parts are the casual misuse of indigenous beliefs and stories. Fans and critics immediately spoke up against this appropriation. Some of the most quoted voices included Nambe Pueblo scholar Dr. Debbie Reese who runs the site “American Indians In Children’s Literature”; Navajo writer Brian Young; Johnnie Jae (Otoe-Missouria and Choctaw), founder of A Tribe Called Geek; Dr Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation), a Professor at Brown University who runs the blog “Native Appropriations”, and writers N.K. Jemison and Paula Young Lee.
PAGE 5
Rowling is famous for responding to fans directly on twitter, yet she did not respond to anyone calling out the damaging aspects of “Magic in North America.” Her representatives refused to comment for March 9 2016 article in the Guardian. She has never apologized. All of this, plus the casting of Johnny Depp and the specific declarations of support by JKR, Warner Brothers, and director David Yates left a sour taste in my mouth.
For further thoughts on the new films read The Crimes of Grindelwald is a Mess by Alanna Bennett for Buzzfeed News, November 16, 2018.
PAGE 6
Excerpt from Colonialism in Wizarding American: JK Rowling’s History of Magic in North America Through an Indigenous Lens by Allison Mills, MFA, MAS/MLIS (Cree and Settler French Canadian)
Although Rowling is certainly not the first white author to misstep in her treatment of Indigenous cultures, she has an unprecedented level of visibility and fame, […] One of the most glaring problems with Rowling’s story is her treatment of the many Indigenous nations in North America as one monolithic group. […It] flattens out the diversity of languages, belief systems, and cultures that exist in Indigenous communities, allowing stereotyping to persist. […] It continues a long history of colonial texts which ignore that Indigenous peoples still exist. […] In the Wizarding world, as in the real world, Indigenous histories have been over-written and our cultures erased.
from The Looking Glass: New Perspectives in Children’s Literature Volumn 19, Issue 1
PAGE 7
Part 5: Music
Panel 1: Also in 2016 I discovered two podcasts which radically altered my experience of being an HP fan. The first was Witch Please created by two Canadian feminist literary scholars Hannah McGregor and Marcelle Kosman.
Panel 2: “If it’s not in the text it doesn’t count!” “Close reading ONLY!”
Panel 3: They talk about Harry Potter at the level you’d expect in a college class with particular focus on gender, race, class, and the troubling fatphobia, fear of othered and queer coded bodies, violence against women, white feminism, gaslighting and failed pedagogy in the books. They bring up these issues not because they hate the series, but because they LOVE it.
PAGE 8
These passionate, joyful conversations went off like fireworks in my mind. I had never taken a feminist class before. I gained a whole new vocabulary to talk about the books- and the world.
PAGE 9
Panel 1: The second podcast I started that year was Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, created by two graduates of the Harvard Divinity School, Vanessa Zoltan and Casper Ter Kuile.
Panel 2: They read one chapter per episode through a theme such as love, control, curiosity, shame, responsibility, hospitality, destruction, or mystery. Like Witch Please, they are interested only in the information on the page, not thoughts from the author. The delights and failures of the text are examined in the context of the present day, and new meanings constantly arise.
PAGE 10
What does it mean to treat a text as sacred?
Trusting that the more time we give to it, the more blessings it has to give us.
Reading the text repeatedly with concentrated attention. Our effort is part of what makes it sacred. The text is not in and of itself sacred, but is made so by rigorously engaging in the ritual of reading.
Experiencing it in community.
“To me, the goal of treating the text as sacred is that we learn to treat each other as sacred.” -Vanessa Zoltan
PAGE 11
Part 6: Tooth and Claw
In October 2017, Rowling liked a tweet linking to an article arguing that trans women should be kept out of women’s bathrooms because of cisgender women’s fears. In March 2018, she liked a tweet about the problem of misogyny in the UK Labour Party which included the line “Men in dresses get brosocialist solidarity I never had.” The author of the tweet had previously posted many blatantly anti-trans statements.
Rowlings publicist claimed she had liked the posted by accident in a “clumsy and middle-aged moment.” Yet, in September 2018 she liked a link posted by Janice Turner to her column in the Times UK titled “Trans Rapists Are A Danger In Women’s Jails.”
Screencaps of these tweets can be found in the article “The Mysterious Case of JK Rowling and her Transphobic Twitter History”, January 10 2019 by Gwendolyn Smith (a trans journalist), LGBTQNation.com
PAGE 12
Excerpt from: Is JK Rowling Transphobic? A Trans Woman Investigates by Katelyn Burns
Ultimately, the answer is yes, she is transphobic […] I think it’s fair that she receives criticism from trans people, especially given her advocacy on behalf of queer people in general, but also because she has a huge platform. Many people look up to her for creating a singular piece of popular culture that holds deep meaning for fans from different walks of life, and she has a responsibility to handle that platform wisely. (Published on them.us March 28, 2018)
PAGE 13
Part 7: Home
At age 30, I’m still not over Harry Potter.
Panel 1: I’ve recently found a local bar that does HP trivia nights. “Poppy or Pomona?” “Poppy!”
Panel 2: I currently own an annual pass to Universal Studios so I can visit Hogsmeade.
Panel 3: I love talking to kids who are reading the books for the first time. “Who’s your favorite character?” “Ginny!”
Panel 4: And I’m planning a relisten to the audio books to next year to help me get through the election cycle. “Jim Dale, I’m going to need you more than ever…”
Spoiler from 2023: I did not do this. By mid-2020 JKR had posted her transphobic essay; we were in covid; I never visited Universal Studios again.
PAGE 14
But I do want to learn from her mistakes. I never want to repeat “Magic in North America.” As I write, I will do my research. I will consult experts and compensate them. If a reader from a different culture/background than me speaks up about my work, I will listen and apologize. I KNOW I WILL MAKE MISTAKES. But I will own up to them and I will do better.
PAGE 15
Excerpt from Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power and Publishing by Daniel José Older
We can love a thing and still critique it. In fact, that’s the only way to really love a thing. Let’s be critical lovers and loving critics and open ourselves to the truth about where we are and where we’ve been. Instead of holding tight to the same old, failed patriarchies, let’s walk a new road, speak new languages. Today, let’s imagine a literature, a literary world, that carries this struggle for equity in its very essence, so that tomorrow it can cease to be necessary, and disappear. (Buzzfeed, April 14, 2017)
PAGE 16
Harry Potter is flawed, & JK Rowling is problematic. But the books helped me learn a lot:
*One of the greatest dangers facing the modern world is the rise of fascism
*The government cannot be trusted
*Read and think critically
*Question the news: who paid the journalist? Who owns the paper?
*Trust and support your friends through good times and bad
*Organize for resistance
*Educate and share resources with peers
*The revolution must be diverse and intersectional
* We are only as strong as we are united
*The weapon we have is love
MK 2019
PAGE 17
PART 8: EPILOGUE
In 2021 I removed a Harry Potter patch I sewed to my book bag over a decade ago. I took 15 pieces of Harry Potter fanart off my walls. I got rid of my paperback book set, 2 board games, and 8 t-shirt. [images: a Hogwarts a patch with loose threads, a pair of scissors and a seam ripper]
Panel 1: Maia holding up a shirt with the Deathly Hallows logo on it. Maia thinks: “Damn, this really used to be my entire personality.”
Panel 2: The t-shirt gets thrown into the Goodwill box.
PAGE 18
I wrote my zine wrestling with JKR’s legacy in 2019, after her dismissive and racist reaction to indigenous fans and critics of “Magic in North America” and after she had liked a couple transphobic tweets. Since then, she has gotten so much worse.
A Brief Timeline (mostly from this Vox article)
June 2020- JKR posts a 3600 word essay making her anti-trans position clear
August 2020- The Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Org issues a statement about her transphobia, JKR doubles down on her position and returns an award they gave her
December 2020- JKR claims 90% of HP fans secretly agree with her anti-trans views
December 2021- JKR mocks Scottish Police for recognizing transgender identities
March 2022- JKR criticizes gender-inclusive language and legislation
December 2022- JKR retweets trans youtuber Jessie Earl’s critical review of Hogwarts Legacy, starting an onslaught of transphobic harassment towards Earl
December 2022- JKR removes her support from an Edinburgh center for survivors of sexual violence with a trans-inclusive policy and funds her own center which explicitly excludes trans sexual assault survivors
January 2023- JKR tweets “Deeply amused by those telling me I’ve lost their admiration due to disrespect I show violent, duplicitous rapists.” It got nearly 300K likes
March 2023- One the podcast “The Witch Trials of JK Rowling”, hosted by a former Westboro Baptist Church Member, JKR compares the trans rights movement to Death Eaters.
PAGE 19
What are The Witch Trials of JK Rowling?
Panel 1: Maia speaking. “It’s a 7 episode documentary style podcast hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper. Nearly every episode contains interviews with JKR as well as critics, journalists, historians, protestors and fans.
Panel 2: Maia speaking. “In episode 1, JKR speaks more candidly than she has previously about being in an abusive marriage. Her ex-husband hit her, stalked her, broke into her house overlapping with the time she was writing the first three HP books.”
Panel 3: Maia speaking. “What she went through genuinely sounds horrific. I have a lot of sympathy for the kind of life-long traumas those experiences leave.”
PAGE 20
HOWEVER.
It is clear from reading the June 2020 essay on her blog and listening to the podcast, that JKR still to this day feels unsafe. Despite her wealth and privilege she moves through the world with the mindset of a victim. And the group of people she finds most threatening are trans women.
Or rather, she is afraid that allowing trans women in women’s spaces invites the possibility of male predators entering those spaces.
Here’s a direct quote: The problem is male violence. All a predator wants is access and to open the doors of changing rooms, rape centers, domestic violence centers [...] to any male who says “I’m a woman and I have a right to be here” will constitute a risk to women and girls. - from The Witch Trials episode 4 as transcribed by therowlinglibrary.com, March 2023
Image: A stem of Belladonna with flowers and berries.
PAGE 21
Let me introduce here the term: TRANSMISOGYNY. The intersection of transphobia and misogyny, this term was coined by Julia Serano in 2007. Scout Tran, on tiktok as Queersneverdie said: “Transmisogyny occurs in people who have been previously hurt by traditional misogyny. Who have been driven to hate men or at the very least to be scared of men. They will sometimes take out that rage on trans women. (March 2023)
JKR claims to care for trans women and understand they are extremely vulnerable to assault and violence. In her 2020 Essay she wrote: “I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe.”
So she cares about trans women… just less than cis women, and she’s willing to throw all trans women under the bus because of her unfounded, prejudice fears.
PAGE 22
Panel 1: Maia speaking. “JKR claims to have seen data that proves trans women have presented physical threats to other women in intimate spaces, but never cites sources. She also uses “producer of the large gametes” as a definition of “woman”.
What about transmen and nonbinary folks?
Panel 2: Maia leaning on a stack of all seven HP books, the first four Cormorant Strike books and The Casual Vacancy, gesturing to a series of quotes with a tired and disgusted expression.
I’m concerned about the huge explosion of young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning. * [...] If I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. -June 10 2020 essay
I don’t believe a 14 year old can truly understand what the loss of their fertility is.
-Witch Trials episode 4
I haven’t yet found a study that hasn’t found that the majority of young people experiencing gender dysphoria grow out of it*. -Witch Trials episode 7
*No sources cited
PAGE 23
It’s hard to over emphasize how fixated JKR has become on these topics. As of the date I’m writing this, 14 out of her 20 most recent tweets (70%) are in some way anti-trans. She tweets against Mermaids (a UK based trans youth charity), against trans athletes, against gender neutral bathrooms, and in support of LBG Alliance- a UK org that denies trans rights while upholding gay rights. Here are some gems from her archive:
“People who menstruate.” I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud? -June 2020
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman. - December 2021
And in response to someone asking “How do you sleep at night knowing you lost a whole audience?”
I read my most recent royalty cheques and find the pain goes away pretty quickly. -October 2022
PAGE 24
Hashtag Ruthless Productions a queer nerd podcast company created a great guide on ethical engagement with HP. Image: the two hosts of Hashtag Ruthless productions, Jessie (They/she) and Lark (he/him).
Stop buying all official HP Products: books, movies, games, toys, etc, Universal Studios tickets, food, merch.* Boycott any new TV series or movies. Instead: buy the books and DVDs used. If you still want to wear HP merch, buy fan-made. Engage only with fan content: fic, podcasts, fanart, wizard rock, etc. Show transphobia is bad for business. None of this will change JKR’s mind. But the Fantastic Beast series was canceled and after record Pottermore sales in 2020, they fell in 2022 by 40%.
*She gets a portion of ALL tickets. In 2019, this was her largest income source. Read the full guide: hashtagruthless.com/resourceguide
PAGE 25
As late as 2019, I was still reading JKR’s murder mystery series. But by the fourth book my experience began to sour.
Panel 1: Maia holding a copy of Lethal White. “The only gay character in this book is a government official who gropes his staff?”
Panel 2: “The only genderqueer character is misgendered and portrayed as a whiny faker?”
Panel 3: “The only Muslim character is disowned by his family over gay rumors?”
Panel 4: “Even the women aren’t portrayed very well…”
Panel 5: “Why is the main female character defined by the rape in her past?”
Panel 6: “Wait, what happens in the rest of this series…?” Maia scrolls on eir phone.
Panel 7: “Is the series heading towards an employee/boss relationship?”
Panel 8: “And has a man wearing women’s clothes to commit assault?”
Panel 9: “Yeah, I’m done. I’m never reading a new JKR book ever again.”
PAGE 26
And as for JKR herself?
As tempting as it might be to tweet your frustrations at her, I don’t recommend it. In 2021, she tweeted, “Hundreds of trans activists have threatened to beat, rape, assassinate and bomb me.” Getting hate online feeds her sense of victimhood and she waves it as proof of her moral high ground. Instead I suggest you block her on twitter, then delete twitter, go to the library and try to find a new book that feels magical.
Stack of books: In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan, The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater, Gifts by Ursula K Le Guin, Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane, A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik and Gideon the Ninth by Tamsin Muir.
PAGE 27
In “Emergent Strategy” adrienne maree brown writes: You do not have the right to traumatize abusive people, to attack them, personally or publicly, or to sabotage anyone else’s health. The behaviors of abuse are also survival-based, learned behaviors rooted in pain. If you can look through the lens of compassion, you will find hurt and trauma there. If you are the abused party, healing that hurt is not your responsibility and exacerbating that pain is not your justified right.
PAGE 28
Seeing anyone over age 12 wearing HP merch now makes me uncomfortable. Are they ignorant or actively a TERF? I hate wondering how much money JKR has probably poured into anti-trans legislation… This zine is a culmination of my slow breakup with a story that once brought me joy. Now it just makes me angry, tired and sad.
Image: Candle in a fancy holder burned down to less than an inch.
Maia Kobabe, 2023
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end of beginning | carlos sainz
face claim: none ᡣ𐭩
requests: here !
tags: angst, break up (rebeccarlos ily pls this is just for the story)
───────── ౨ৎ ─────────
september 2023
👤 carlossainz, charles_leclerc
liked by carlossainz, chares_leclerc and 70,385 others
y/nstagram boyfie won another race but looking at the second pic, i may be the real winner ❤️
carlossainz princesa, contigo a mi lado, siempre soy el ganador
(princess, with you by my side, i'll always be a winner)
↳ y/nstagram stop you'll make me blush 🤭
charles_leclerc stop being gross and in love on my feed
↳ y/nstagram carlossainz should we kiss in front of him again xx
↳ carlossainz sin duda ❤️
(definitely)
↳ charles_leclerc i hate it here
user1 i want to be y/n when i grow up (i am 2 years older than her)
↳ y/nstagram then it should be i wanna be user1 when i grow up 😘 also where is your top from in your pfp, i love it!!
↳ user1 ??? im in love with you ??? it's from this little boutique near my house! i can send you one!!!
↳ y/nstagram omg i will send you the money!! 🫶
user2 this is why we stan y/n, a true girls girl ❤️
♥️ y/nstagram
francisca.cgomes even the back of you is gorgeous
↳ y/nstagram kiss me.
↳ francisca.cgomes come here 😘
↳ pierregasly i miss when my girlfriend was only My girlfriend
↳ y/nstagram not my fault she upgraded x
↳ pierregasly i will take carlos out on the first corner don't try me
↳ carlossainz you'll have to catch me first hombre
january 2024
liked by kellypiquet, francisca.cgomes and 39,495 others
y/nstagram bed rotting but make it 🎀 aesthetic 🎀
user1 she still watches f1 y/nsainzers there's hope
↳ user2 she hasn't been to a race in months :((( hope is dwindling
user3 the bear i'm gonna scream, cry AND throw up
↳ user4 what's the significance of the bear?? i'm new to f1 :)
↳ user3 carlos got y/n the bear when he joined f1 so she would have something to remember him by when he went away on race weekends
↳ user4 and she still has it?? it must have been like 10 years ago??
↳ user3 roughly around that!! 2015 if i'm correct...
kellypiquet i see the red bull on your screen 😉 would love to have you back with me in the paddock, P misses her bestie ❤️
↳ y/nstagram P saw me last week when i spoilt her rotten in the mall but i may take you up on that offer ❤️
user2 y/n in the red bull garages??? y/nsainzers i fear we've lost her...
↳ user1 carlos may be moving to red bull don't give up hope best friend!
march 2024
liked by charles_leclerc, scuderiaferrari and 924,495 others
carlossainz P1 in Australia :) thank you for the well wishes guys, maybe my appendix was what was holding me back 😉🎉
landonorris booking the surgery rn
↳ carlossainz you still wouldn't win muppet
↳ landonorris wow carlos... low blow
user1 the last pic... pls say it's y/n PLEASEEEEEEEEEE acc on my knees rn
↳ user2 i'm down there with you best friend
iamrebeccad congrats mister!! next up: the world championship
♥️ carlossainz
user3 ^^ um guys
↳ user2 don't
↳ user1 don't.
charles_leclerc i'll get you next time...
↳ carlossainz ok charlie, i believe you
scuderiaferrari forza carlos! congrats on P1, not even surgery could keep you down 💪
↳ user5 you bitches don't deserve to celebrate
maxverstappen1 strong fight there mr sainz! looking forward to japan where i'll be back on top!
↳ carlossainz fuck you
This comment has been deleted
user3 UM GUYS???????
↳ user2 do not look at f1wagupdates i'm being so serious
↳ user1 well now i have to FUCK
liked by user8, user9 and 93,283 others
f1wagupdates Carlos Sainz seen kissing Scottish model Rebecca Donaldson following his Australia GP win. He was previously linked to long time girlfriend Y/N L/N but the pair haven't been seen together since December last year. We guess this marks the end of their decade long relationship.
user2 carlos sainz i'm in your walls.
user1 man, fuck carlos sainz
user3 3 months ?? if that ?? glad his appendix burst
↳ user2 reports (twitter) are saying R + C were first seen together in January...
↳ user3 the c*rlos s*inz voodoo doll is being made as we speak.
user4 all men do is lie. what happened to "until the end of time"... i don't believe in love anymore
user5 i feel so bad for rebecca, y/n's so loved by the paddock and the fans
↳ user3 obvs no hate to rebecca, she's gorgeous and i'm sure she's lovely, this is solely carlos hate
♥️ user1, user2 and 19,349 others
user6 bro fumbled the bag with y/n man
👤 kellypiquet, maxverstappen1, landonorris, redbullracing
liked by landonorris, kellypiquet and 58,395 others
y/nstagram different point of view 💙
redbullracing pleasure to have you back in the paddock y/n! see you in japan? 👀
↳ y/nstagram i'll be there best friends (pls stock up on coconut red bulls) 🫶
↳ redbullracing 🫡
kellypiquet the last pic?? i love you so much??
↳ y/nstagram y'all are so cute i couldn't stop myself 🤭
maxverstappen1 thanks for coming y/n! i've missed seeing you around
↳ y/nstagram missed you too maxie! P says she wants me to come to every race so you may be stuck with me this year!
↳ maxverstappen1 just please don't steal my girlfriend
↳ y/nstagram she may be your girlfriend but she's My wife
♥️ kellypiquet
francisca.cgomes why didn't you tell me you were coming!! i would have ditched pierre :((
↳ pierregasly everyday i wake up
↳ y/nstagram unfortunately
↳ pierregasly bro...
landonorris you got the champagne shot in action! missed seeing you around bug!
↳ y/nstagram had to see it with my own two eyes! congrats on the podium lan, you so deserve it ❤️
↳ landonorris let's get dinner tomorrow, it's been too long
↳ user1 mr norizz shooting his shot on main damn
↳ landonorris 🤷♂️
carmenmmundt all the girls are getting together for dinner and drinks, you coming babe?
↳ y/nstagram i'm having dinner with kelly, max and P but i'll join for drinks after ❤️
user2 goodbye goodbye y/nsainzer's you were brighter than the whole sky
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Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain
I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!
A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.
Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766
But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security
Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:
https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf
Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:
https://searchengineland.com/is-google-search-getting-worse-389658
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.
This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/google-paid-26-3-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021
Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works – just that it works for people stupider than them."
And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."
Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.
A viral post by Housefresh – who review air purifiers – describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:
https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/
You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."
But these grandiose claims – like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in Better Homes and Gardens's Des Moines lab – result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.
Most damning of all is how the Better Homes and Gardens top air purifiers perform in comparison to the – extensively documented – tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like ‘the Tesla of air purifiers.’"
One of the top ranked items on BH&G comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model BH&G chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by Consumer Reports. Either BH&G's rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or BH&G absolutely sucks at rigorous testing.
BH&G's competitors commit the same sins – literally, the exact same sins. Real Simple's reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." Real Simple has the same corporate parent as BH&G: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a lot of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.
But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists 22 air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.
A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like Popular Science, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs PopSci makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they loooove Molekule).
Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.
Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"
They broke the deal.
Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.
https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/welcome-to-the-cnet-smart-home/
Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like BH&G into our eyeballs instead.
In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.
An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh – through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all – so they can put a lot more content up that Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.
Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in…making more botshit:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked
Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.
That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.
When Google admits that it's losing the war to these kack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's very frustrating. When they vaporize seventy billion dollars on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's outrageous.
Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground – and endless temptation – for scammers.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task
#pluralistic#monopoly#seo#dark seo#google#search#enshittification#platform decay#product reviews#spam#antitrust#trustbusting
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