reading, shows, fics, intersectional feminism, social justice, black lives matter, stop Asian hate, kinky, polyam, y'know. Does over 30 count as elder trans?
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:
The "Serenity Prayer" (Serenity to accept things I can't change/Courage to change the things I can/Wisdom to know the difference) is usually cited as pop psychology or addiction recovery advice, but I think there's a place for it in policymaking.
Take the EU's fight against US Big Tech. During the Biden years, the EU's tech policy matured into something serious and ambitious, culminating in the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA), a pair of big, muscular policies that would curb Big Tech's most abusive conduct. The EU's ambition didn't occur in a vacuum: it was part of a global wave of antitrust fervor whose top agenda item was reining in tech:
In this fight, the EU had important partners all over the world. For example, South Korea and Japan used the facts uncovered through EU enforcement action against Google and Apple to pursue similar cases:
But the EU's most important partner in its fight against American Big Tech was America. Biden's trustbusters â Lina Khan, Rohit Chopra, Jonathan Kanter, Tim Wu, et al â were every bit as serious about Big Tech power as anyone in the EU. After all, the American public are always the first victims of any new tech scam, and America is the only country with a large, affluent population who lack modern, comprehensive consumer privacy protection, making Americans highly prized prey for tech companies:
With America and the EU on the same side of the tech fight, the world had a fighting chance. Tech knew this, which is why Big Tech backed Trump hard during the 2024 election and aggressively curried his favor after he won. From the tech barons who paid $1m each to sit behind Trump on the inaugural dais to the millions tech companies donated to Trump's Epstein Ballroom at the White House, tech has made it clear that it supports anything Trump wants to do, provided he shields Big Tech from any attempt to limit their ability to spy on and steal from Americans and the world.
Even before he took office, Trump made it clear how he would reward tech's loyalty: weeks before the inauguration, Trump went to Davos and threatened the EU with reprisals if they enforced the DSA or DMA against his tech companies:
Trump wasted no time leaning on US trading partners on behalf of Big Tech. He bullied Canadian PM Mark Carney into dropping his plan to tax US tech companies. Big Tech uses a variety of tax-cheating gambits to evade taxation around the world, making it impossible for (tax-paying) domestic companies to compete:
None of the governments that caved to Trump got anything in return. As I've written:
Give Trump everything he asks for and he'll demand more. Deny Trump anything and he'll demand more. Sign a contract with Trump and he'll break it. Send Trump an invoice and he'll stiff you. For Trump, "the art of the deal" can be summed up in one word: renege.
Case in point: after the EU surrendered to Trump on AI regulation, Trump announced that a on ban EU officials who had worked on the Digital Services Act from traveling to the USA:
After all, Apple is a key partner in the Trump administration's mass deportations. Apple blocked an iPhone app that warns Apple customers if they're about to be kidnapped or murdered by ICE. Trump needs Apple, just as much as Apple needs Trump:
Despite this, the EU keeps trying to enforce its laws against Trump's companies. Last week, the Commission announced a $1b fine against Google for violating the Digital Services Act with conduct that cost Europeans many billions:
In other words, Google wasn't even being ordered to disgorge all the money it stole, just some of it. Remember, a fine is a price: the EU's fine here will only make this kind of cheating slightly less profitable.
Nevertheless, Trump responded immediately by threatening the EU with many billions more in tariffs if they continue to attempt to enforce the law against one of his companies:
Trump, the European Commission and Google all know this is about more than one $1b fine. The DSA and DMA both provide for steeply rising fines and other penalties for repeat offenders, and Google clearly has no plan to end its very profitable European crime-spree. Trump's threats aren't a bid to kill this enforcement â Trump wants to kill all enforcement.
Retaliatory tariffs aren't the only weapon Trump has at his disposal. If the EU (or any other country) levies a serious fine against Google, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, or any of Trump's other tech companies, Trump can order US banks not to turn over those fines, even after the EU sends them a court order for the money. If a bank defies Trump, he can threaten to yank its charter. Or he could just run the same swindle he pulled on Tiktok: stealing the whole company and selling it to one of his buddies, who will run it the way Trump wants.
The reality is that without America's assistance, the EU has precious little hope of forcing American companies to do things they don't want to do. In terms of the Serenity Prayer, this is "a thing they cannot change."
The Serenity Prayer doesn't stop with "things you can't change." The next line seeks "the courage to change the things I can." The EU has no control over Google's conduct, but it has total control over its own conduct.
Specifically, the EU could get rid of the laws that ban European companies from modifying US tech exports. The EU adopted the Copyright Directive in 2001. Article 6 of the EUCD makes it a crime to reverse-engineer and modify a device without the manufacturer's permission. This law was adopted under pressure from the US Trade Representative, who threatened the EU with tariffs on its exports unless it adopted an "anticircumvention rule" that banned EU technologists from making products that let Europeans prevent US tech companies from stealing their money and data":
This law is still in force in the EU, despite the fact that Trump (predictably) reneged on the US side of the bargain, hitting the EU with massive tariffs and even threatening to steal part of Denmark.
Article 6 of the Copyright Directive is the reason European tech companies can't jailbreak America's apps, whether that's to get its government and corporate data off of US platforms:
The EU can't control what Apple or Google do. But the EU can absolutely decide whether Trump's companies can use Europe's courts to destroy European companies that defend the privacy and economic integrity of the European people.
If the EU kills off Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, they can use European companies to bring Google and Apple's defective tech exports into compliance with European law. Unlike Trump's companies, those companies can be forced to pay their taxes and respect their users' privacy, labor and consumer rights.
That's the Serenity Prayer's "wisdom to know the difference."
For Sam Wilson appreciation day and Bucky Barnes appreciation day of sambuckyweek I wanted to draw everyone who loves and appreciates them. Also they are getting married.
rip to the guy who posted his very expensive yixing teapot to r/tea, only for the comments to be not compliments on his taste as he expected, but instead GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY and I SHOULD CALL HER. he then crossposted it to r/gongfutea, which is ordinarily more dignified and self-serious, but was it? was it?? of course not, because this is reddit, and this was the teapot
like they've already made it very clear by a) ghosting me for months and b) getting my colleagues to train their stupid new ai. like i only know about this because one of my colleagues tipped me off. i imagine they're waiting to get it working before they formally let me go and fuck that. i am literally drafting my resignation lmao
guys. there has been an update. my spy colleague has informed me that my ex-boss is backtracking. the ai was supposed to speed things up because apparently i was unavailable too often but it turns out that another colleague has been lying about me telling him i was unavailable. i have email receipts proving this never happened.
this colleague also has beef with me because his documents were always garbage and i came back with a million corrections and called him out for mass copy-pasting. so he was just skipping the editing and saying i said i couldn't do it. and i lost my job because of it.
shoutout to all the people reblogging the version of this before my rejection letter. and especially shoutout to those people saying they're happy for me and that there's justice on this earth. i regret to inform you that my version of justice means choosing violence.
you are alive on a planet with insects and whales and diatoms and mycelium networks and puppies and your human friends. literally so awesome to be a living thing
AO3 has reached 18 million fanworks on the site! Come celebrate with us and learn about collections features. Read more at https://otw-news.org/3zd6mwss.
If you read interviews with homicide cops, two things quickly become clear
It is really not all that hard to get away with murder. A basic amount of foresight and prep will get rid of enough evidence that the police either won't find the killer or will be unable to make the charge stick.
Despite this, most murders do get solved, because someone who decides that murder is the solution to their problems is probably not the kind of person to be levelheaded and careful enough to avoid getting caught.
I think something very similar is true of sockpuppet accounts. It's not that hard to make a convincing sockpuppet. However, people almost always make sockpuppets as a way of defending their egos, of making it look like they have more support than they actually do. And this passionate defense of someone the sockpuppet ostensibly doesn't know and has no reason to care about is a dead giveaway. So if you want to validate a sockpuppet you have to lose an argument to it. You have to get owned. Once it makes you look like an idiot, basically no one will ever suspect it again.
Unfortunately, by posting this, I've burned my only chance to actually do it. From now on, whenever you see me getting dunked on, you'll assume it's staged sockpuppet validation. and you'd be right. i have never lost an argument on this website. every single one was staged. i did not get owned. i did not get owned.
I have a close family member who has severe cognitive issues as a result of abusing opioids for multiple decades and if I am talking about that I do NOT need to hear you expound on how The Opioid Epidemic Is Fake Actually. silence your contrarian leftist instincts for three seconds and understand that "moral panic about this thing is overblown and harming people" does not mean "the thing is actually totally fine and risk-free"
Why is so much adult oriented 2d animation bastard ugly, do they know they donât have to do that? The characters donât have to projectile vomit all the time either, but maybe thatâs asking too much
I'm just going to drop some of my favorite adult 2d animated series that are not bastard ugly and don't rely on projectile vomit and other "gross" jokes to be entertaining (at the very least, they are a far cry from whatever Big Mouth has going on).
1. Scavengers Reign
Scavengers Reign follows three groups of survivors who crash land on an alien planet as they traverse various ecosystems to get to safety. There is a lot of thought put into the flora and fauna they encounter, and it explores their relationships with each other and with the crew members as they are assimilated into the environment. Plus, the art is absolutely beautiful.
Unfortunately, season 2 is very very unlikely to be greenlit (but I'm holding out hope and still think it's worth watching).
2. Pantheon
Pantheon is one that is incredibly underrated. It's about two teenagers uncovering the development of uploaded intelligence, the transfer of human minds into computers. Maddie Kim is a bullied, computer savvy freshman who lost her dad to cancer while Caspian Keyes is an apathetic prodigy living within an abusive household. Overall, it covers themes of grief, love, and what it means to be human. It gets pretty philosophical and mind-fucky at times, and I love how the animation reflects that. Just look at that title sequence:
And thankfully, this one was finished.
3. Inside Job
Inside Job is about an ambitious but overworked engineer working for the shadow government. I'll admit that this can lean into some crass humor/animation, but I think it's well balanced with other aspects of the show. I love the mc's characterization. Reagan is motivated but feels held back by the incompetence of her boss and co-workers. She wants to move through the ranks but has a hard time taking care of herself. She becomes best friends with the male lead, her foil, but never falls in love with him romantically. The series is overall both hilarious and relatable.
This one has also been canceled after the first season :(
4. Creature Commandos
Creature Commandos has a clear comic book style and is about a group of imprisoned nonhumans sent to protect a princess from Circe. Like Inside Job, it can lean into some sexual humor, but it pales in comparison to the show's characterizations. I really only remember their compelling backstories and how each character was affected by them.
It's a short watch of 7 episodes, and season 2 is in production.
5. Bojack Horseman
Bojack is fairly well-known, but I can't not include it. Even though I personally had to adjust to the art style, it's not something I ever thought of as ugly. And the animation at some points is memorable and really highlights the more serious scenes. The comedy is also well-balanced and includes a lot of dry humor and visual gags.
(Just remembered that the first 2 seasons are kind of hard to watch, so I totally understand if it's not worth going through for you)
6. Common Side Effects
This is more of an honorable mention because I've never watched it and I'm a little offput by their faces. However, I do plan on giving it a chance because one of the creators of Scavengers Reign also worked on it.
Here's a source for the analysis, but it probably is not the source.
Workersâ share of US economic output has fallen to its lowest level since the government began keeping records in 1947, according to data th
Some points of interest:
Corporate profits are soaring. After taxes, they now take 12.3 percent of national output, far above their postwar average of 7.3 percent.
Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages have risen 3 percent since the end of 2019, Ip noted. Corporate profits over the same period have risen 50 percent.
The Economic Policy Institute calculates that since 1979 the productivity of American workers has grown 90 percent while the pay of the typical worker has grown 33 percent. Had wages tracked output, the average worker would earn $16.40 more an hour today.
The profits are concentrated among the largest corporations. Earnings at the 500 biggest US firms rose 28 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the fastest pace since 2021, and their profit margins reached 14.8 percent. The seven technology giants known as the âMagnificent 7ââApple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Teslaâgrew their profits 63 percent.
In the United States, the richest 1 percent of households hold 31.7 percent of all wealth. The bottom half hold barely 2.5 percent.
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