@ZubyMusic: Politics can rot people's brains to the point that they'll oppose good ideas if they come from the 'wrong people' and support bad ideas if they come from the 'right people'
Tumblrino: I heard someone say the other day that most people's brains don't separate information into "true" and "false" but rather "us" and "them": will the people of my tribe approve of this? Then it's true. Will the people of my tribe disapprove and cast me out for expressing it? Then it's false.
This grabbed my attention because they're definitely referring to Dan M. Kahan's research on "Identity-Protective Cognition."
This paper supplies a compact synthesis of the empirical literature on misconceptions of and misinformation about decision-relevant science.
Most people think they update their beliefs based on evidence, but Kahan's research suggests otherwise and it's fascinating.
Identity-Protective Cognition is the tendency to selectively credit or dismiss evidence based on what your group believes, not what the evidence actually shows.
Among the ideas in this paper:
Being wrong is often the rational choice
If you change your mind on a "tribal" issue (climate change, gun control, vaccines, etc.) you risk social ostracism, family conflict, loss of status.
(Does that sound familiar?)
Being correct about a global scientific fact, meanwhile, has essentially zero effect on your personal life or the global outcome.
So your brain runs this calculation...and chooses the tribe.
Smart people are worse, not better
Kahan found that higher scientific literacy and reasoning ability actually increase polarization.
Smarter people, he says, are better at cherry-picking evidence and finding flaws in the other side's data. Their intelligence becomes a weapon for motivated reasoning, not a cure for it.
We don't just ignore inconvenient facts, we actively embrace misinformation that flatters us
Identity-affirming misinformation (stuff that makes your tribe look good) gets a free pass. Identity-threatening facts (stuff that makes your tribe look bad) get fought tooth and nail.
Kahan's proposed fix is information decoupling.
He says we need to separate the fact from the identity signal it carries.
Presenting correct information alone is useless and often counterproductive.
Kahan says you have to make the truth feel safe for someone's existing identity without implying they need to defect to the other side to believe it.
But...how?!
What Kahan is really describing is that humans are social animals before they are rational ones.
We evolved to survive in groups, not to optimize for abstract truth (to varying degrees.)
So our brains aren't broken, they're just running software thousands of years old in a world they didn't evolve to cope with.
None of this means minds can't change - they change constantly - but Kahan's research suggests the mechanism of change isn't argument or evidence. It's identity shift.
People change their minds when they find a new tribe, a new role model, or a way of seeing themselves that makes the truth feel like theirs.
And that insight might explain why identity politics tend to backfire
If you organize persuasion around group identity, you deepen the very grooves that make minds hard to change. You grow only rigid ideologues engaged in purity tests who are good at chanting in rhythm. They won't be creative, nuanced, pragmatic, diplomatic, or effective communicators.
Yascha Mounk's The Identity Trap makes this case from a different angle.
When well-intentioned people make identity "the all-encompassing dividing line of American life," they aren't dissolving tribal thinking, they're institutionalizing it.
The result, Mounk argues, is an ideology that denies that members of different groups can truly understand each other. It squashes liberal pluralism.
That's precisely the condition that makes Kahan's trap inescapable.
The alternative Mounk points toward is very much like Kahan's: universalism.
Mounk says we need identities large enough to contain disagreement without triggering tribal self-defense.
His argument is that universal values, not group solidarity, offer the surest path to justice, fairness, and enduring social peace.
The model he holds up as effective is the civil rights movement. It wasn't an appeal to Black identity alone, but to a shared American identity, shared moral values, and a vision of humanity big enough that even those outside the group could feel called to it, not accused by it.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't tell white Americans they were the enemy. He told them (and showed them) that they were falling short of their own ideals.
That's what a large identity looks like in practice. It isn't the erasure of difference, just a framework (built on words like citizen, neighbor, and human) where we aren't defined solely by the groups we were born into, but by what we can build together.
Note: My readers are written with inclusivity and women of colour in mind, with minimal descriptors or indetifying features, along with actions and intent, however everyone is encouraged to read and enjoy 💜
Chapter Summary: It's your first day on the job at L.K.A productions and for your very first shoot, you're working with the boy next door himself, Adrian Chase only for things to not go quite to plan.
Warnings for this chapter: MINORS DO NOT INTERACT - DO NOT FOLLOW ME, DO NOT COMMENT OR REBLOG, GTFO. 18+ ONLY. Alternate Universe - The gangs all here, but it might not be as we know them. Reader has history as a camgirl. Reader is in her 30's. Adrian is bisexual, reader is bisexual, almost everyone is queer here because I said so. Brief mention of financial problems. Pregnancy and parenthood mentions (NOT READER). Porn with plot, quite literally. Adrian might not be vigilante, and he's out of character for a lot of things, but his goofy personality is intact haha. Cheesy porn dialogue. Cheesy porn plots. Cunnilingus. Vaginal fingering. Squirting. Foreplay. Humping. Adrian has had a vasectomy. Reader is on birth control. Mention of mandatory industry STD testing. Premature ejaculation x2. Uh-oh, feelings. Mentions of alcohol consumption.
->I do not give permission for my fics or plots to be copied or fed into any AI software, please respect the wishes of writers and just enjoy the source material that has been provided to you.<-
A/N: Support real life sex workers! You can find information and resources here at the red umbrella fund on global sex work support.
Fic Masterlist || Chapter Two (Coming Soon) ||...
Dividers: @/dividers-are-us
Walking onto an actual set felt daunting, it's not like this was your first day in porn or anything, while you're not exactly established in the industry, you're not fresh faced either, however your previous work was solo content on only fans, this felt bigger than you, wholly unprepared for working somewhere of this calibre.
L.K.A Productions was owned and run by industry pros Leota Adebayo and her wife Keeya, they'd been making high grossing lesbian porn, marketed specifically at women. The two of them met on set and fell madly in love, moving to running their own company before their first daughter, Octavia was born.
It had been by pure luck that you'd been scouted by them, you work alone with no management team or social media experts to help push your content out there, everything had been done solely by you, and you alone.
When Keeya had reached out to you, you were dumbfounded, confused about how a well-known company would have interest in a solo cam girl who had fewer than 50,000 followers.
Still, you weren't about to turn down the offer, you had bills to pay and you were desperate to be able to afford to move out of the shitty one bedroom apartment you were renting, DIY sound-proofing could only do so much to stop your creepy next door neighbour from trying to listen in on your sessions.
"It's okay to be nervous, you know?"
The reassuring voice beside you pulls you from your thoughts, Leota had been giving you a mini tour of HQ when your mind had drifted away from you, doing mental calculations over how much you'd need to save for a deposit and a moving van.
Blinking away the confusion, you look over at her, admiring the pretty beads threaded onto her locs. "Sorry, guess I'm just in my own head about this a little, I mean this is… this is big for me, y'know?"
A gentle smile lifts the corners of her lips, holding the door open for you as she leads you down yet another corridor, not even phased by the delighted groans that echo from behind closed doors as you pass.
"Totally normal, trust me, my first day on a real set? I had to have a tequila shot or two for courage before getting in front of the cameras." Her open approach and infectious laugh helps you to relax, the nerves in your gut simmering to a low roll that you could practically ignore now. "Did Kee talk to you about who you'd be shooting with today?"
Extensively.
The videocall with Keeya had been two hours long, conferenced in with your co-star for the day who just had question after question, after question about the 'plot'.
Adrian Chase. You knew his name well, of course you did, it was pretty hard to miss when it would be trending on at least one of the big social media platforms frequently.
You'd be lying to yourself if the idea of working with him wasn't something you were looking forward to, he was hot, there was no doubt about it, but there was something else about him that drew you to him, maybe it was his stupid Instagram stories with ridiculous little captions that would always make you smile, like the time he posted a 5 second video of what he claimed to be an owl hooting, only to have to follow up with another story several hours later to confirm that in actuality, that noise had been a gull.
Like you, Adrian had started off with solo work, shooting to fame after one of his videos had gone viral; there just seemed to be something about his overall look that people went crazy for, the floppy curls and nerd glasses, perfect white smile and dimples that made him look even more handsome.
Having a big dick and a well toned body also helped, of course.
Despite that, and the industry he worked in, he didn't seem all that good with people overall, he'd hardly said two words to you the entire video call, most of the time it was him asking questions that then went off topic, with a very heavily pregnant and clearly frustrated Keeya attempting to redirect him.
Still, you found yourself genuinely excited to meet him in person, and your first joint shoot was going to be with him; a man who despite his social quirks, was apparently very talented when it came to fucking, at least.
Nodding in response to Leota's question, you hear raised voices as the two of you approach the main set, the one that's reserved for more 'plot-filled' shoots, with an entire prop department on hand.
Leota sighs, throwing you an apologetic smile over her shoulder as she leads you in, a green screen back drop hangs from the ceiling, fake picket fences surrounding a perfectly lush fake lawn, complete with little pink flamingos and garden gnomes.
Beside that are two 3-walled rooms, made to look like the living room and adjoining bedroom, the entire thing is bigger than your own apartment, and considerably better decorated and furnished too, no water stains or anything.
You're busy familiarising yourself with your new habitat for the day, meanwhile Leota has already made a beeline for the source of the raised voices.
It's Adrian, in the flesh, a navy blue robe covering up his bare torso, though he's half dressed with his jeans on, clearly at some point during wardrobe something has gotten him off-track.
He's arguing with a taller man who you recognize to be John Economos, a well renowned director, the bearded man's arms gesturing wildly, whatever their spat is about is apparently very upsetting to them both.
"Alright! What seems to be the problem here, gentlemen?" Leota speaks loudly enough to be heard over the two of them, her tone of voice placating, but stern.
You're trying not to be nosey, but your eyes still wander over to the trio anyway. Over her shoulder, your eyes lock with Adrian's for a quick second before hastily breaking the eye-contact, deciding that perhaps you should take yourself off to wardrobe and prepare yourself for your scenes with him.
Adrian's eyes linger on you as you walk away, hands on hips, following your form until you're out of sight, being ushered behind one of the privacy screens.
"Well why don't you ask this doofus here what the problem is, considering he's the one who's got a bug up his butt about the script." John smacks the script into Adrian's abdomen, shooting him a glare as he stalks off, leaving him to speak to Leota instead.
"Adrian, you promised!" Leota whines, shaking her head. "I thought Keeya went over this with you, you just need to say the lines and then after that you can ad-lib or whatever, within reason."
Clenching the script in his hands, Adrian holds it up, scrunching up his face. "Ads, you don't understand, this is terrible! It's so cheesy, it's straight out of some 1970's porno! I mean listen to this," He flips open the script, quickly thumbing the pages until he finds the right page. "See, right here, she asks me if I'd like something to drink and I, a very hard working housekeeper, completely ignore her question and say 'well that depends, have you ever squirted before?' I'm not saying it, Ads, I'm not it's too stupid!"
Leota has to remember her breathing techniques there and then, remembering that if she allows this pedantic manchild to be the reason that she ends up with a migraine, then Keeya will never let her live it down.
"Adrian, listen," Leota lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, knowing that the easiest option all round is reverse psychology when it comes to Adrian. "I wasn't going to mention this before, but Fluery kinda insinuated that he was interested in doing this shoot today, yeah, so if you really don't want to do it, I can always ask if he still—"
"No!" Adrian answers a little too quickly and too loudly to be considered a normal response, even by his standards, his cheeks heating when he notices everyone on set looking in his direction. Sighing heavily, he continues, calmer now. "I mean, no, Ads. I'll do it, I just… warn me next time if you're gonna make me like a pizza delivery guy asking if someone ordered a large sausage or something."
Leota feels the forming headache dissolving away in an instant, genuinely laughing at Adrian's dismay over being force-fed dumb lines.
"I promise, I'll try not to let the script writers get too carried away with their freedom of creativity." When she notices his attention drifting and the small goofy smile on his face, Leota's eyes track where Adrian's attention has landed, on you, reappearing from behind the divider looking flustered as the flowing bathrobe you wear hangs off one shoulder, the studio lights making you glow like some kind of pornographic angel. "I didn't tell her, you know?"
Adrian's head whips in Leota's direction, wide eyed and unblinking as she just coyly smiles back at him, knowingly.
Your own set of costumes had been limited before, and not quite so ostentatious.
The same 5 cycled lingerie sets you'd wear while sitting in front of your laptop got you so far, but this was a whole new ball game with hair and make-up fussing over you, despite your insistences that you were capable of applying your own lipstick.
And then there's the feeling of being exposed, not in the naked sense, but feeling the watchful eyes of a whole crew of people meandering nearby onset, even if none of them are really looking at you, all too busy doing their actual jobs, but knowing you're going to have what is essentially a live studio audience to bear witness to your first real joint session is a little overwhelming considering your usual audience were hidden away behind screens, jerking off while simultaneously typing in the comment section.
You'd get used to it, learn to block everyone out as if they weren't even there. In time, that is.
The costume for today is simple, a plain, short shift dress, white of course to tie in with forgoing a bra beneath. You feel comfortable in it, it almost makes you feel right at home, it it weren't for all the boom mic's and bright lights on
You're in position on the sofa, wondering just how many times they've had to steam clean stains out of this thing, a fake book propped up in your lap, legs outstretched, wearing a pair of panties beneath that can only be described as cheese wire between your ass cheeks. The sooner this session starts, the better.
At the edge of the set Leota hovers, smiling at you with a little wave and a thumbs up that translates to 'good luck', you can tell she's proud of the business her and her wife have built, and despite your trepidation, it's easing to know that you're working for people that have your best interests at heart.
"Alright everyone, quiet on set please!" John's voice bellows beside her, making her grimace. "I see our lovely lonely housewife is ready and in place, where the fuck is Adrian?"
John hisses when Leota's jabbing elbow connects with his ribs, shooting the bearded man a scowl.
"I'm here! God dude, keep your panties on.", The partition wall between the living room and front yard prevents you from seeing Adrian, but you can definitely hear him and knowing that the two of you are going to start rolling any second now makes your pulse tick up just that little bit faster.
"Oh and he's funny too!" John deadpans, slumping down into his directors chair. "Adrian on your marker and then we countdown, got it?"
"Wait!" A heavy sigh from John. "No, actually, I'm all good!"
"I swear you do this shit on purpose to intentionally piss me off, Adrian." John mutters, pulling on his headset.
"If I wanted to do that, don't you think I'd come up with something more clever? Like I'd probably say the dye job on your beard looks terrible, for example"
"Adrian!" Leota scolds.
"What?? I said 'for example'!"
"Fucking asshole… action!"
John's lack of countdown throws Adrian off for a moment, but he manages to right himself, going straight into character, smiling widely for the cameras as he makes his way up the path to the fake front door, a bag slung over his shoulder filled with a pillow just to bulk it out and a cleaning caddy in his opposite hand, the spray bottles just empty props.
On the other side of the partition you hold the book up in front of your face, as if you weren't just staring at totally blank pages, the cover is some photoshopped fake fairy-porn mockup that won't get anyone sued.
3 quick knocks on the door and you're up on your feet, padding across the tape marked floor, your breasts bouncing slightly with each step.
Opening the door to him almost has you forgetting your lines, this is the first time you've seen him up close like this in person and he's more handsome than you could have imagined, big green eyes sweeping over you behind his glasses, crooked grin popping a single dimple on one side of his face.
Alright, showtime.
The boom hovers overhead just out of shot, a camera man to the left steps closer to get a close up of the two of you, you're not going to be the reason why there's a million takes of your first duo shoot.
"Well, what do we have here?" The sensual purr in your voice is perfect, inviting and tinged with a subtle heat that goes straight to Adrian's cock. "I thought my usual housekeeper was Mary? I wasn't expecting someone so…" A drag of your gaze over his body, you catch the way his Adam's apple bob slightly, his pupils dilating behind those silver aviators, and it gives you a thrill to know that there's just some things a porn actor can't fake. "… Good looking."
Adrian's been sporting a semi for the better part of an hour now in the lead up to this, he didn't need any time to prep or fluff, simply knowing that he was working with you today had done this to him.
And that was a massive problem.
The blush creeps up his neck before he can do anything to stop it, the cameras picking up on the pinkish hue, something they'll have to edit out in post-production; or not, if John really wants to torture him.
Remember your lines Adrian, you do this shit everyday!
"Mary's out sick, so I'm afraid you've got me cleaning up all your messes today ma'am. I'm Adrian."
The lines really are ridiculous, but even if he's cringing internally at having to be the one to deliver them, Adrian shoves that feeling aside with little effort.
When you turn his eyes drop to the curve of your ass, tracking each step you take, each jiggle of the perfectly rounded flesh beneath your dress only serves to get him more excited for what's to come.
You drop back down onto the couch with an over-exaggerated sigh, positioning yourself in such a way that makes you look like you're about to be painted, one leg elongated across the cushions, the other bent at the knee, propping that ridiculously obvious prop book against your bare thigh.
The camera catches all of it, out of the corner of your eye you can see the dolly moving closer, panning in on your legs, on the way your dress rides up. It really will take some getting used to this.
"Take your time, cutie pie, it's extra dirty today."
So you don't love the dialogue, it certainly needs some polish, but you're also not trying to win an Oscar here, so you'll grin and bear it.
Adrian's already shut the door behind him and set down his bag and caddy, hands on hips as he looks around the space. The prop department spared no expense in making the home well lived in, magazines askew on the coffee table beside you, breakfast bowls left out at the table with nothing in them. This is their idea of 'extra dirty.'
"Well thank you ma'am." Grabbing one of the prop spray bottles and a cloth, Adrian goes to the mantle first, stock photo family members line the unlit fireplace, nothing the camera would pick up on, not that it would matter anyway. "Is this your husband?" Adrian inquires, wiping down a golden frame with some random couple on their wedding day in, he wonders if they know they're being used in porn shoots now.
You lower your book again, arms folding over the back of the couch as you turn your attention to him, nodding languidly. "That's my Warren, alright. Man of my dreams." Your sigh is a little too convincing in the way it sounds longing, woeful even.
"Well he's a very lucky guy, miss."
"Try telling him that!" You laugh briefly, a bitter edge in it. "He works away so much, and I'm here on my own all the time. It gets so lonely sometimes."
You're too good at this, that heated look you just gave him with too realistic, Adrian has to turn his back to you and the camera for a moment, tucking his stiffened dick into the waistband of his jeans with a subtlety that won't have John yelling 'cut!'
"I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm sure he misses you!" He's busying himself with pretending to dust, knowing that he's minutes away from touching you and tasting you for the first time, he's already feeling that tingling feeling in his balls that has him worried he's going to jizz in his pants just from you looking at him the way you are.
John and Leota exchange confused glances, but they let the cameras keep rolling, for now.
"Yeah, maybe." Sighing, you lay back into the cushions, the camera slowly panning up your body. "If he knew you were here today, he'd probably be so jealous, he's a little insecure like that."
Adrian thinks he's gathered his bearings enough to continue, making his way over to the coffee table now to tidy up the mess of magazines, trying his best to not look directly at you the entire time.
"He's just protective of what's his, I'm sure. A beautiful woman like you? Here all alone for days on end." Adrian makes the mistake of letting his eyes drift over to you, landing on your soft thighs that he can't wait to get his face buried between, visible stretch marks etched on your skin like a divine canvas.
You play into it, smirking devilishly as you shift on the couch, slumping down into it further, your skirt caught between your ass and the memory foam, showing off the sliver of thong that sits on your hip.
"Can I get you anything to drink, Adrian?"
You've said it, that line that he's been dreading to counter, but at the same time, he's been on tenterhooks waiting for.
Resisting the urge to sigh, Adrian's eyes flick over to John and Leota once, the former of the two giving him a look that dares him to not say the ridiculous line.
"Well that depends. Have you ever squirted before?"
How he managed to deliver that line without sounding like he wanted to die on the spot, Adrian will never know, but he did, and now the real show begins.
You're all too aware of the camera now, you keep seeing it in your peripheral every time you open your eyes and it's a little distracting, all you're doing is kissing right now, but you're just all too aware of the room full of people.
Seated in Adrian's lap, he's got a handful of each ass cheek, kneading at the pliant flesh beneath your skirt as he guides you to shallowly grind down on his clothed erection. His lips are hot and wet against your own, your lipstick messily smeared over his mouth and he's making these delicious little groans that make your empty cunt ache.
Keeya had instructed the two of you to take your time before actually having sex on camera, that was how they operated as a company, it might be scripted plots, but they always wanted the intimacy to be real and comfortable for their actors.
You're trying to relax as much as you can, you really are, your fingers are embedded in his curls, manicured nails raking over his scalp, grounding yourself to him, trying to focus solely on him. Even so, Adrian catches those moments when the facade slips, he feels the tensing in your muscles and the way your brow flexes and furrows against his own as you kiss.
He's been where you are.
You chase his lips, whining when he pulls away suddenly, the hands gripping the globes of your ass, move up to your hips, deflty guiding you off of him, you're left confused when he gets up abruptly and almost immediately John yells out.
"Cut! Adrian, what the fuck are you doing?"
You could ask the same question, honestly.
You can't see Adrian's face as he leaves the staging area and makes his way over to the directors chair, but you hear the heavy sigh and right there under the spot lights, you feel more exposed than you would if you were naked right now. You're mentally trying to pinpoint what you did wrong, whether it was that the making out part was going on too long, or whether Adrian's had cold feet about shooting with someone so new to all this, either way, you feel yourself wanting to shrink right there and then, you wish there weren't so many people around to witness this humiliation.
Somehow this is the quietest John's been the whole time you've been on set, you can't make out what's being said between him, Leota and Adrian, which only makes your anxiety worse. What if they realise they've made a mistake hiring you?
You're trying to decipher any kind of clue from watching Leota's expressions, the small nods and quick glances in your direction, they're definitely talking about you.
Maybe you should just get up and go get changed now, save them the job of having to send you on your way.
Then something happens that you weren't expecting, Adrian's coming back; and he's smiling.
It shouldn't make your stomach flip the way it does, you're not even going to think about what's happening there.
When he flops back down beside you, no one's yelling action, the cameras aren't on you, infact, the camera guy has wandered off to grab a sweet pastry snack. There's no expectations or pressure right now.
"Okay so," He starts, draping his arm over the back of the couch behind your head "I noticed you're having a few first day jitters, right? I mean, don't get me wrong, your confidence and delivery with those crazy stupid lines earlier was great, super fucking convincing, but you were kinda brick-walling just now, and that's not me being a dick or anything! That's just an observation!" Adrian clarifies, needlessly.
You shift, your legs tucked under yourself, bumping your knee with his own accidentally.
"Was it that obvious?"
You're cute when you laugh, Adrian thinks, in fact you're just cute, full stop, which is not something he wants to think.
"A little?" His lopsided grin is so charming, this is the first time you're really getting to speak to him, no scripts, and it's just so easy.
"Okay, yeah, I'm just— not entirely used to all this yet?" You gesture vaguely in front of you and he follows your hands movement, nodding in understanding before looking back at you, his attention laser focused, it makes you feel all tingly. "I mean, it was one thing to have like, hundred of people at a time watching me stream, but at least I didn't have them all their in my fucking living room at the same time, you know what I'm talking about?"
Laughing with him is putting you at ease, you'd genuinely thought that this was going to be your first and last shoot for a hot minute back there. You needed this reprieve. Maybe both of you did.
"No, I get it, trust me, it's not easy going from sitting in front of your laptop in the comfort of your own home, surrounded by creature comforts, to all this. It's a big leap, sooooo with that in mind, I talked to the big cheese's over there and we came up with an idea, you can totally input your own thoughts, or fuck it, we can reschedule this entire thing for another day. It's your choice."
Your brows shoot up in surprise, this isn't at all what you expected.
"Wait. Really?"
Adrian's face twists with confusion. "Yeah? Now do you wanna hear the idea I pitched?"
He'd gone out on a limb for you, only wanting your comfort to come first and you appreciated that more than you could express, and if you could actually form any cohesive words right now, you'd be telling him how thankful you were for this idea.
The cameras are back on, but you don't even notice them, you wouldn't in this position anyway.
Adrian's sitting beneath you on the couch as you kneel over him, finally free of that painfully thin g-string, skirt pushed up over your hips with his fingers gripping the fabric for leverage as he pulls you down onto his face over and over again.
The focus is entire on him and what he's doing to you, two knuckles deep in your pussy while he sucks and slurps at your clit, producing the filthiest wet sounds you've ever heard.
You're leaning over the back of the couch, grasping the cushions, almost entirely forgetting that you're even being filmed right now, if it weren't for your 'faux-home' surroundings that is. Every now and then your chin drops to your chest and you see him staring up at you between your thighs, nose deep in the slickened curls on your mound, he looks so fucking pretty like this, all eager, uncaring that his glasses are askew or coated in your arousal.
Your hand finds it's way into his hair, carding through it with your fingers, urging him on, pushing his face impossibly deeper into your cunt, earning a feverish groan from him that rumbles through you.
This is what Adrian does best, with any of his on screen partners who have a vagina, that is, this is one of his specialities and he loves every fucking second of it. The way you taste, the way you smell, every ecstasy filled moan you let out as he pushes you closer and closer to the brink, only to ease up and draw things out at the last second, selfishly wanting this to last longer, even if the swell in his jeans is threatening to explode any second now just from pleasuring you alone.
That's new for him too.
Just when you think he's about to let you come he withdraws his fingers entirely, heavy panting breaths fanning over the insides of your sticky thighs as he rubs maddeningly slow circles around your clit instead, above him you're trying to push him back to where you want him, but he just places kisses and nibbles on your skin instead, you feel him grinning, it's both the most hottest and infuriating thing you've ever experienced.
"God I could eat this pretty pussy for hours." He's so whiny, replacing his fingers to lick a broad stripe up from your entrance to your clit, even if he's trying to tease you, it would seem he can't keep his mouth off of you for longer than the time it takes to catch his breath before he has to taste you again. "You never did answer my question, you know?"
You feel his expectant gaze on you and sure enough, when you look down again he's right there looking up at you with a puppy-dogged look, that combined with his lips latching to your clit, make you want to fuck him silly right there and then.
"What…question?" Somehow you've formed words, by nothing short of a miracle with the way he's sucking the soul out of your body, two breathy words that took a great effort to get out, even if they do rapidly dissolve back into a moan.
He pulls off your swollen clit with a pop, going back to kissing your inner thigh, the hand on your hip leaving you entirely to land on his crotch, palming at the throbbing bulge that presses against his zipper, attempting to get some kind of relief.
"Have you ever squirted before?" That's an honest question, you can tell, the curious lilt in his voice gives that away. "Has your husband ever bothered to try?" You'd drifted off again, forgetting that you're even shooting right now, that you're playing a lonely housewife and that there's a camera pointed directly at your dripping sex, capturing every second of your asshole puckering, so wide open, and even so, you don't find yourself caring anymore.
Stroking your fingers through his hair has him nuzzling into the meat of your thigh like a cat, ardently awaiting your answer, even if he's pretty sure he already knows.
"No, baby, I haven't. Why?"
You're so fucking sexy it's driving him insane, suddenly that confidence has returned and an impending sense of doom has hit him with it.
Adrian's absolutely fucked, and not in the way he was hoping for.
Although, your answer was what he was hoping for, honing in on the way your lips curl into a smirk as you stare down at him, it's not just your 'character' who's never experienced it before, and boy, is he about to show you what you've been missing.
A nibble at the juncture of your thigh where your slippery heat and his spit have coated your skin. "Hold on for me."
So you do, holding onto the couch, onto him, he doesn't seem to care at all about having his hair tugged on, infact he likes it if those groans are anything to go by when your fingers weave tighter into his mussed curls.
His gaze stays fixed firmly on your face as he teases your cunt, circling the pads of his fingers over your fluttering hole, dipping in just an inch, letting you hear how soaked you already are, all the while, his eyes never leave you.
"Holy fuck, you're so beautiful." You think for a moment he was talking to your pussy, but when you open your eyes again he's looking right at you, he's all flushed cheeks and awe as he sinks his fingers in just enough, hooking them just right, effortlessly finding that spongy spot inside you that has your hips arching. "That's it, miss, let me take care of you now."
You barely have time to think before he's diving between your legs again, spreading your lips open with his fingers to get to the puffy pearl between them suuuuucking it between his lips dutifully while the two digits inside you pump shallowly, massaging your g-spot with every passing drag.
It's unhurried, calculated, he's learning your cues, you realise, every moan he can pull from you, every squirm of your hips, the tremble in your legs that builds from the effort of staying upright and from your steadily approaching climax. It won't be long now, you're already drenched as it is, dribbling down his knuckles, he sure of that.
Adrian's cock weeps within its denim confines, he feels it, making the dusty blonde hairs at the base sticky with pre-cum, he knows he's probably not going to last long when he finally fucks you, but he's made peace with that, as long as he can give the cameras a good show and get you to cream on his cock, that's all he cares about.
You'd wondered why Keeya told you to drink plenty of water this morning before you got here, and now you know why. You feel it, that urge in your bladder, it's intense and overwhelming, hitting out of nowhere like a freight train, leaving you with barely enough time to garble out a breathless warning before you feel a warm spray, gushing from between your legs.
Adrian moans into your cunt, his face getting coated with your juices, fogging up and covering his glasses.
Withdrawing his fingers, his free hand slides up to your stomach, gently pushing down as his thumb replaces his mouth on your clit as spray after spray rains down on him, soddening his face, shirt, the couch.
The noises you're making are divine, wrecked sobs and cries falling from you as your legs shake uncontrollably either side of him, you feel his hand leave your stomach, his arm sliding around your thighs, holding you steadfast, anchoring you in place as you ride out the waves of euphoria.
And then all too quickly and without warning, Adrian follows you over that blissful edge, hips arching off the couch, stuttering in the air as he coats the inside of his jeans with rope, after rope of come, without intending to let that happen in the slightest.
Neither of you hear the first yelled 'cut', or the second, too fucked out. For a long moment, you're pretty sure you burst an eardrum from the pressure of coming so hard, never having experienced something like that before, you don't know if that's normal, until the ringing in your ears subsides and you do hear the third yell.
Adrian can't bring himself to look at you, it's been an hour and one wardrobe change later and he's still thinking about it, ruminating on the fact that he just came in his pants on camera, solely from making you squirt.
That has never happened to him before.
Not in his entire time making porn, not in his entire life, he prided himself on his stamina, he worked hard to build it up, but there was something about you that erased all that, and that was a problem.
He can still smell you on his skin, that sweet and slightly musky scent, despite being sent off to clean himself up, being given his robe to change into between scenes, you still linger.
John hadn't been too mad about it, luckily, even if he did relentlessly tease Adrian about coming in his pants as he walked off set. It delayed the end of the shoot, sure, but they could work with the footage they have, work their editing magic to seamlessly transition to the next scene, one that Adrian's praying that despite his earlier embarrassment of shooting his load too early, that maybe it will at least help him last longer.
You'd also been ushered off to the nearest bathroom to clean up, while a supportive Leota waited outside enthusiastically singing your praises for an amazing first shoot, all while skirting around the industry fauxpas that Adrian had unintentionally committed.
There had been a little awkwardness on his part after the fact, when he'd wordlessly helped you to lay on the couch as the after shocks trembled through you, you'd wanted to say something, maybe 'great scene' or 'I think I almost died', but before you'd even had the chance to talk to him he was already gone, darting past the directors chair and past the wildly grinning man sitting in it.
Now you're just waiting on him once more, all cleaned up laying on the bed this time with a modesty blanket covering your nude figure. You're relaxed now, after that first shoot all your care went out the window about people watching the two of you, Adrian helped rid you of that worry, even if now you're somewhat concerned about his seemingly innate lack of aftercare. You wondered if that's just how he operated or if he was feeling sheepish about what happened back there, either way, you put it to the back of your mind, tabling it for a later time when you can talk it out with him. You don't personally care that it happened, infact if you'd had anything left in you, you might have come again yourself just from how hot it was, thinking about it again makes you clench around nothing.
Hearing him before you see him is becoming a common theme, somewhere off out of your line of sight, it sounds like he's protesting something, what though, you're not sure, but his voice is getting clearer the closer he gets, along with Leota's soothing reassurances and you guess that she's coralling him, like the saint she is, talking him through whatever it is that's made his voice go all high pitched and whiney.
An assistant is walking away from you with your water bottle in hand when you finally see him, robed up now, his curls are neater too now, slightly damp, he probably had to wash his hair hastily between scenes. A slither of skin is visible where his chest peaks out through the V in his closed robe. Bare legs out now, the hem of his robe stopping just above his knees, he's all thick calves and thighs, something you'd love to sink your teeth into if you have the opportunity to work with him again after this, that is.
Green eyes dart over to you once, you note the tick in his jaw when he looks away, the subtle shift in his stance as his arms cross over his chest while he finishes up his hushed conversation with Leota.
A comforting hand on his shoulder from her as she nudges him towards the staging area, he's avoiding all eye contact with you, unrushed as the assistants hurry back in to fuss over the two of you.
"You okay?" You can't stop yourself from asking when he's near enough, at the foot of the bed, being helped out of his robe, while you're having your blanket removed.
"Totally fine! Why wouldn't I be?" The tone of his voice is too shrill, he's answered too quickly to be casual too and he still won't look at you, which could be a problem considering you're literally about to have sex.
The assistants dart off in a flurry, leaving the two of you once more, you try not to, but you can't help it when your eyes drift southwards, seeing him in his videos and seeing him in person like this are two entirely different things. His cock is already semi-hard, thick and slightly curved, a bushy thatch of curls at the base, slightly darker than the hair on his head.
Adrian catches you looking, the tips of his ears tinge red, and his mouth goes dry when he relents and let's his gaze fall onto you, drinking in every inch of your body, laid out on the bed like a fucking goddess. Just the sight of you makes his cock visibly twitch.
He's going to last this time, he needs to.
"Okay! Are we ready to go?" John's voice pulls Adrian's attention away from you— albeit reluctantly— finding the director waiting for his go.
"Uh, y-yeah! I mean, I'm totally good to go!" He really is adorable when he's nervous, no matter how hard he tries to hide it.
Maybe now it's your turn to repay the favour for what he did for you, take control.
When John calls action, you don't hesitate, sitting up on your knees as you crawl to him at the edge of the bed, pathetically wide eyes just staring at you, mouth slightly agape.
"It's okay baby, I don't bite. Unless you're into that." Maybe you're taking a page from the book of porn clichés right now, but you can't seem to bring yourself to care, not with the way his muscles jump beneath your finger tips when you slide a hand over his defined abs. "Why don't you lay down, let me take care of you now?"
That smirk of yours is dangerous, full of promise and sin.
Your hardening nipples brush against his chest as you lean up, arms wrapping around his neck as you draw his face down to your own with a gentle guiding hand on the back of his head.
Adrian's powerless to resist your charms, following your lead.
Your plush lips meet his own, soft, moisturized, tasting faintly of whatever balm you've used between scenes. You feel the tickle of air on your upper lip when his breath catches, it's addictive how easy it is to push his buttons, one little hair tug is apparently all it takes for him to start to unravel.
Big hands find your hips, rooting himself to you as he climbs onto the bed, letting you guide him down onto the silken sheets, the two of you grinning against each other's mouths when he pulls you down on top of him.
Fingers dance up your thighs as you straddle him, lowering your hips until his cock is nestled between them, you feel him twitch again between you, sensitive to the heat that seaps from your core.
It's not long before the kiss deepens, the two of you getting lost in each other, grinding down as he thrusts up, your fingers buried in his hair, his hands somehow all over your body all at once.
His length slips and slides through your slit, the mushroom head catching on your entrance once or twice, making your hips cant and your breath hitch. Equally, Adrian tenses with each accidental probe, it's not painful for either of you, of course, the opposite intact, it's just that the slight contact feels like being struck by lightening every time it happens; for him, at least.
Without barriers between you, he's going to feel every bump and ridge inside you, a velvety heaven waiting to wrap around his cock.
You'd talked about the logistics of protection before, on the video call with Keeya, they give all their actors the choice of using condoms or not, depending on their own comfort, along with your personal preference, and the fact that you've been on birth control for years, combined with the revelation that Adrian has infact had a vasectomy and prides himself in being punctual when it comes to the monthly mandatory STD testing, you were confident in your choice to take him raw.
The two of you are too caught up to even care about the camera guy at the foot of the bed, zooming in on the space between your bodies, capturing the way you're creaming his dick, leaving a white and slick trail all over him.
Adrian just about hears John calling out, directing him to hold your ass cheeks apart for the camera, and he does just that, fingers digging into the plump muscles, gripping handfuls of you as he ruts upwards to meet your rolling hips.
The two of you are a panting mess, kissing each other with a hunger that is building into what will be an inevitable frenzy of fucking.
Or, that's what you had planned.
Instead he's gasping like he's just been electrocuted, hips stuttering beneath your own as he let's out a pained whimper, painting your outer lips and dark curls with come.
He'd given them a money shot, but at what cost?
"For fuck sake, Adrian! Cut!" John hollers, burying his face in his hand as the camera withdraws.
You pull back, confused and wide eyed, staring down at him. "Adrian, did you just—?"
"No! Well, yes! But I swear I didn't know that was going to happen! If I did I would have tapped out, asked for like 5 minutes. Oh my fucking god this never happens to me." He grabs the nearest pillow, shoving it over his own face to hide away from the world.
Possibly his worst day on set ever, with the hot new girl who made him come too soon, twice.
The rest of the shoot was promptly canceled for the rest of the day, something about too many retakes, mumbled under John's breath as he stalked off set. Maybe they could just work with what they have, or maybe they'll get the two of you to film the rest another day, you don't know.
What you do know though, is that your nervous habit of biting your nails is going to ruin the fresh set you'd applied only days ago.
In the back of a cab long after filming had ended for the day, you'd had the chance to go back to your hotel room to shower and change, spending time on your makeup and hair, choosing an outfit for this impromptu meet and greet that Leota had sprung on you before you'd managed to squirell away for the day.
A bar on the other side of town, called Lucky 8's, hidden away on a strip of sidewalk away from the bustling nightlife that spills from bar to bar at the furthest end of the street.
When you pull up, Leota waves, beaming at you as you step out of the car and hand the driver some cash and a tip.
"Look at you!" She wolf whistles, twirling a finger in a playful gesture to get you to show off your outfit, you do, rolling your eyes, holding back the grin that threatens to break out as you spin for her in a full 360. "I almost thought you weren't gonna show!"
Her arm links with your own as she guides you towards the double doors, you hear the music inside, it's not a thumping baseline that would make you want to plug your ears, but a song you recognize from your high school days.
"I almost didn't!" You tell her in a hushed whisper as the two of you step inside, it's a quaint bar, spacious enough to fit the entire crew, it would seem, tables pushed together in a line. This isn't as impromptu as she led you to believe. "Jesus christ, is this everyone who works for you?"
Leota snorts at your balking tone, gently tugging you in past the bar and the welcoming host behind it.
"Almost everyone, yeah. We like to make sure everyone knows each other! C'mon, lemme introduce you to a few faces you'll be seeing regularly!"
Allowing her to lead you, you feel yourself picking at your nail bed now that you can't bite.
A few eyes land on you when you approach, and instantly you recognize them as some of the biggest names in L.K.A productions, at one end of the table, Sasha Bordeaux sits with Rip Jagger, the raven-haired woman's eyes sweep up your body slowly, heating your cheeks under her gaze. Beside them, Langston Fluery, a veteran porn actor, flanked by two beautiful women either side of him that you don't recognize, later coming to find out from a tipsy Leota that they're his girlfriends.
In the middle, Chris Smith and Emilia Harcourt, they look like they're engaged in a deep war of words, the blonde's arms gestilicuating, doing more of the talking for both of them with Chris made to listen, for a moment you think maybe he's upset by it, until Emilia looks away for a brief moment to chug her beer and he's looking at her with this dopey, love-sick smile that tells you he's exactly where he wants to be.
At the opposite end, John sits with Clemson Murn, producer of a lot of x-rated movies that went on to win awards, and a very heavily pregnant Keeya, who sits with them, sipping her mocktail as she waits for her wife to return.
You can't help but notice the very apparent absence of Adrian though, a twinge of disappointment eating at you, even if you can't quite pinpoint why.
"Everyone? Jesus christ guys will you all shut up for a minute!" Leota calls over everyone's separate conversations, hushing the noise to only the music playing over head as she introduces you by name. "I want everyone to look out for her, you all remember what it was like starting somewhere new and in this business we have got to take care of each other!"
Her brief speech rouses a whoop and cheer from Chris, in turn making Emilia roll her eyes, but even you notice the way she forces back the twitch at the corner of her lips.
Almost immediately everyone is back in their own bubbles, chatting amongst themselves, laughing, drinking, or embroiled in after hours shop talk if you're listening in on John and Clemson's conversation.
With a small grunt, Keeya rises from her seat, holding her rounded belly as she comes in for a hug, welcoming you. "It's so good to finally meet you, how was your flight? I heard your first shoot went well!" She seems to excited to have you here, brown eyes lit up and crinkling at the corners as Leota supportively rubs her lower back.
"Well?" You chuckle, flickering your gaze over to Leota who just nods. "I guess so? I mean did Leota tell you about—"
"Adrian spilling the beans too early? She did, yeah." Her flawless delivery has you holding back a bigger laugh. "Not once, but twice? Girl, I think you broke him!"
And as if he were Beetlejuice himself, the doors to the bar creak open and Adrian struts in, looking a little flustered, dressed in something that's not too dissimilar to the outfit he wore on set today.
"Awh fuck! You all started without me?" He bemoans, arms rising above his head and falling in an exasperated manner. "I got caught up at dinner with my mom, don't ask, long story."
"Dude! It's okay I got you a beer right here!" Chris calls out, holding up a bottle that's almost completely swallowed up in his big paw.
"That's my best friend right there!" Adrian grins madly, grabbing the beer from him without hesitation before his eyes land on you and the two ladies you're chatting with.
Your heart pounds a little harder against your ribcage as he approaches, it's unsettling and unwanted.
"Nice of you to make it, Adrian, did your mom get the birthday gift Kee and I sent her last month?" Leota's lips curve into a wry smile.
Adrian rolls his eyes, greeting Keeya and her with a quick hug. "Haha, yes she did and now she won't stop oversharing and telling me how she'll 'never need a man again for the rest of her life!' and that it the toy had been around when she was younger I wouldn't have even been born!"
You do laugh now, attempting to cover it behind your palm.
" You're welcome!" Keeya grins pridefully.
Adrian pouts, a sulking lower lip sticking out that you could just bite.
"Gee thanks," Adrian mutters, looking behind Leota and Keeya as if searching for something. "Where's baby Peach?"
"Baby Peach?" Your voice lilts, inquisitively.
Leota turns to you, looking skyward for a second, amused. "Baby Peach is what he calls our daughter Octavia, who by the way is 4 years old! Why on earth would we bring her to a bar?" She directs that question at Adrian.
"So you just left her home alone?!" He really doesn't think before he speaks sometimes.
"Noooo dummy! Kee's parents are in town helping us out before the baby arrives! They're watching her, like we'd leave our child home alone!" She tries to sound frustrated, but this just seems like a variation of a conversation she's had with Adrian a thousand times over.
"Oh… right! Pfft.Totally knew that!" He absolutely didn't.
"Yeah okay." Keeya murmurs, unconvinced, rubbing her stomach and breathing through the ligament pain. "Baby, I'm gonna sit down again, this kid is using my kidneys as punching bags." She smiles through the pain as Leota helps her to sit back down, tenderly kissing the top of her head.
Adrian follows, pulling up a chair close by, eyes fixed on her stomach, curiously as he sips his beer.
Leota pulls out a chair for you beside him, whcib you hesitate to take for a split second before you move to sit, apologizing when your knee bangs against his own slightly, as if hours before his mouth wasn't on your cunt.
Keeya sighs deeply as her wife goes off to the bar to get her a refill and to get you a drink, eyes narrowing when she sees Adrian staring.
"What?"
"Nothing! Just wondering if you had any name ideas for the baby yet?" He really sucks at the playing it casual thing, you've noticed.
"No, because we don't know whether it's a boy or a girl yet, like last time." Keeya explains tiredly.
"Okay… well, I have a suggestion!"
"No." She counters without missing a beat.
"What? You haven't even heard what I was going to say yet!"
"Don't need to, let me guess, Adrian if it's a boy Adriana if it's a girl?"
Your eyes dart between them in their exchange, unable to stop smiling. "Really?"
"What?!" Adrian scoffs at you, empty of any disrespect, only disbelief. "It's a good name!"
"Yeah and you suggested it over and over when Lee was pregnant! It's not happening, dude!"
"Whats not happening?" Leota's back, carefully setting drinks down on the table before plopping down in the chair beside her wife.
"Adrian's talking baby names again." Keeya muses, her fingers lacing with the loving hand Leota placed on her belly.
"Adrian, not this again! We're not naming our kid after you!"
The exchange goes back and forth well on into the night, with rebuttals and rebukes flying from either side until eventually the expecting parents are the first to leave, instructing you to stay and enjoy yourself and make the most of the open bar tab.
So you do, familiarising yourself with your new crewmates, the alcohol loosening you up enough to get up and dance when Sasha and Rip pull you to your feet.
Even so, your gaze always somehow tracks back to him, whether Adrian is antimatedly telling Chris a story while Emilia pretends to snore, or he's up too, doing a lucicrous dance that can only be described as something akin to a peacock performing a mating dance.
He's just so stupid and handsome, and for you, that's a terrible combination, especially with the way you keep catching him staring at you too.
What is happening here?!
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As someone who works in the reliability sector of IT I cannot emphasize how much you have to give 0 fucks about professional standards and best practices in order to do something like what Crowdstrike did.
At the company I work for, which you have definitely heard of, there are thousands of people (including me, hi) part of whose job it is to sit in rooms for literal hours every week with the people building new features and updating our software and ask them every question we can possibly think of about how their changes might impact the overall system and what potential risks there are. We brainstorm how to minimize those risks, impose requirements on the developers, and ultimately the buck stops with us. Some things are just too risky.
Many of the practices developed at this and other companies are now in wide use across the industry, including things like staggered rollouts (i.e. only 1/3 people get this update at first, then 2/3, then everyone) and multi-stage testing (push it to a fake system we set up for these purposes, see what it does).
In cases where you’re updating firmware or an os, there are physical test devices you need to update and verify that everything behaves as expected. If you really care about your customers you’ll hand the device to someone who works on a different system altogether and tell them to do their worst.
The bottom line here is that if Crowdstrike were following anything even resembling industry best practices there should have been about twenty failsafes between a kernel bug and a global update that bricked basically every enterprise machine in the world. This is like finding out the virus lab has a direct HVAC connection to the big conference room. There is genuinely no excuse for this kind of professional incompetence.
Netflix has unveiled the details of its new anti-password-sharing policy, detailing a suite of complex gymnastics that customers will be expected to undergo if their living arrangements trigger Netflix’s automated enforcement mechanisms:
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:
Netflix says that its new policy allows members of the same “household” to share an account. This policy comes with an assumption: that there is a commonly understood, universal meaning of “household,” and that software can determine who is and is not a member of your household.
This is a very old corporate delusion in the world of technology. In the early 2000s, I spent years trying to bring some balance to an effort at DVB, whose digital television standards are used in most of the world (but not the USA) when they rolled out CPCM, a DRM system that was supposed to limit video-sharing to a single household.
Their term of art for this was the “authorized domain”: a software-defined family unit whose borders were privately negotiated by corporate executives from media companies, broadcasters, tech and consumer electronics companies in closed-door sessions all around the world, with no public minutes or proceedings.
These guys (they were nearly all guys) were proud of how much “flexibility” they’d built into their definition of “household.” For example, if you owned a houseboat, or a luxury car with seatback displays, or a summer villa in another country, the Authorized Domain would be able to figure out how to get the video onto all those screens.
But what about other kinds of families? I suggested that one of our test cases should be a family based in Manila: where the dad travels to remote provinces to do agricultural labor; the daughter is a nanny in California; and the son is doing construction work in the UAE. This suggestion was roundly rejected as an “edge case.”
Of course, this isn’t an edge case. There are orders of magnitude more people whose family looks like this than there are people whose family owns a villa in another country. Owning a houseboat or a luxury car makes you an outlier. Having an itinerant agricultural breadwinner in your family does not.
But everyone who is in the room when a cartel draws up a standard definition of what constitutes a household is almost certainly drawn from a pool that is more likely to have a summer villa than a child doing domestic work or construction labor half a world away. These weirdos, so dissimilar from the global majority, get to define the boxes that computers will shove the rest of the world into. If your family doesn’t look like their family, that’s tough: “Computer says no.”
One day at a CPCM meeting, we got to talking about the problem of “content laundering” and how the way to prevent it would be to put limits on how often someone could leave a household and join another one. No one, they argued, would ever have to change households every week.
I put my hand up and said, “What about a child whose divorced parents share custody of her? She’s absolutely going to change households every week.” They thought about it for a moment, then the rep from a giant IT company that had recently been convicted of criminal antitrust violations said, “Oh, we can solve that: we’ll give her a toll-free number to call when she gets locked out of her account.”
That was the solution they went with. If you are a child coping with the dissolution of your parents’ marriage, you will have the obligation to call up a media company every month — or more often — and explain that Mummy and Daddy don’t love each other any more, but can I please have my TV back?
I never forgot that day. I even wrote a science fiction story about it called (what else?) “Authorized Domain”:
I think everyone understood that this was an absurd “solution,” but they had already decided that they were going to complete the seemingly straightforward business of defining a category like “household” using software, and once that train left the station, nothing was going to stop it.
This is a recurring form of techno-hubris: the idea that baseline concepts like “family” have crisp definitions and that any exceptions are outliers that would never swallow the rule. It’s such a common misstep that there’s a whole enre* called “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About ______”:
https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood
In that list: names, time, currency, birthdays, timezones, email addresses, national borders, nations, biometrics, gender, language, alphabets, phone numbers, addresses, systems of measurement, and, of course, families. These categories are touchstones in our everyday life, and we think we know what they mean — but then we try to define them, and the list of exceptions spirals out into a hairy, fractal infinity.
Historically, these fuzzy categorical edges didn’t matter so much, because they were usually interpreted by humans using common sense. My grandfather was born “Avrom Doctorovitch” (or at least, that’s one way to transliterate his name, which was spelled in a different alphabet, but which was also transliterating his first name from yet another alphabet). When he came to Canada as a refugee, his surname was anglicized to “Doctorow.” Other cousins are “Doctorov,” “Doctoroff,” and “Doktorovitch.”
Naturally, his first name could have been “Abraham” or “Abe,” but his first employer (a fellow Eastern European emigre) decided that was too ethnic and in sincere effort to help him fit in, he called my grandfather “Bill.” When my grandfather attained citizenship, his papers read “Abraham William Doctorow.” He went by “Abe,” “Billy,” “Bill,” “William,” “Abraham” and “Avrom.”
Practically, it didn’t matter that variations on all of these appeared on various forms of ID, contracts, and paperwork. His reparations check from the German government had a different variation from the name on the papers he used to open his bank account, but the bank still let him deposit it.
All of my relatives from his generation have more than one name. Another grandfather of mine was born “Aleksander,” and called “Sasha” by friends, but had his name changed to “Seymour” when he got to Canada. His ID was also a mismatched grab-bag of variations on that theme.
None of this mattered to him, either. Airlines would sell him tickets and border guards would stamp his passport and rental agencies would let him drive away in cars despite the minor variations on all his ID.
But after 9/11, all that changed, for everyone who had blithely trundled along with semi-matching names across their official papers and database entries. Suddenly, it was “computer says no” everywhere you turned, unless everything matched perfectly. There was a global rush for legal name-changes after 9/11 — not because people changed their names, but because people needed to perform the bureaucratic ritual necessary to have the name they’d used all along be recognized in these new, brittle, ambiguity-incinerating machines.
For important categories, ambiguity is a feature, not a bug. The fact that you can write anything on an envelope (including a direction to deliver the letter to the granny flat over the garage, not the front door) means that we don’t have to define “address” — we can leave it usefully hairy around the edges.
Once the database schema is formalized, then “address” gets defined too — the number of lines it can have, the number of characters each line can have, the kinds of characters and even words (woe betide anyone who lives in Scunthorpe).
If you have a “real” address, a “real” name, a “real” date of birth, all of this might seem distant to you. These “edge” cases — seasonal agricultural workers, refugees with randomly assigned “English” names — are very far from your experience.
That’s true — for now (but not forever). The “Shitty Technology Adoption Curve” describes the process by which abusive technologies work their way up the privilege gradient. Every bad technological idea is first rolled out on poor people, refugees, prisoners, kids, mental patients and other people who can’t push back.
Their bodies are used to sand the rough edges and sharp corners off the technology, to normalize it so that it can climb up through the social ranks, imposed on people with more and more power and influence. 20 years ago, if you ate your dinner under an always-on #CCTV, it was because you were in a supermax prison. Today, it’s because you bought a premium home surveillance system from Google, Amazon or Apple.
The Netflix anti-sharing tools are designed for rich people. If you travel for business and stay in the kind of hotel where the TV has its own Netflix client that you can plug your username and password into, Netflix will give you a seven-day temporary code to use.
But for the most hardcore road-warriors, Netflix has thin gruel. Unless you connect to your home wifi network every 31 days and stream a show, Netflix will lock out your devices. Once blocked, you have to “contact Netflix” (laughs in Big Tech customer service).
Why is Netflix putting the screws to its customers? It’s part of the enshittification cycle, where platform companies first allocate surpluses to their customers, luring them in and using them as bait for business customers. Once they turn up, the companies reallocate surpluses to businesses, lavishing them with low commissions and lots of revenue opportunities. And once they’re locked in, the company starts to claw back the surpluses for itself.
Remember when Netflix was in the business of mailing red envelopes full of DVDs around the country? That was allocating surpluses to users. The movie companies hated this, viewed it as theft — a proposition that was at least as valid as Netflix’s complaints about password sharing, but every pirate wants to be an admiral, and when Netflix did it to the studios, that was “progress,” but when you do it to Netflix, that’s theft.
Then, once Netflix had users locked in and migrated to the web (and later, apps), it shifted surpluses to studios, paying fat licensing fees to stream their movies and connect them to a huge audience.
Finally, once the studios were locked in, Netflix started to harvest the surplus for its shareholders: raising prices, lowering streaming rates, knocking off other studios’ best performing shows with in-house clones, etc. Users’ surpluses are also on the menu: the password “sharing” that let you define a household according to your family’s own idiosyncratic contours is unilaterally abolished in a quest to punish feckless Gen Z kids for buying avocado toast instead of their own Netflix subscriptions.
Netflix was able to ignore the studios’ outraged howls when it built a business by nonconsenually distributing their products in red envelopes. But now that Netflix has come for your family, don’t even think about giving Netfix some of what it gave to the MPAA.
As a technical matter, it’s not really that hard to modify Netflix’s app so that every stream you pull seems to come from your house, no matter where you are. But doing so would require reverse-engineering Netflix’s app, and that would violate Section 1201 of the DMCA, the CFAA, and eleventy-seven other horrible laws. Netflix’s lawyers would nuke you until the rubble bounced.
When Netflix was getting started, it could freely interoperate with the DVDs that the studios had put on the market. It could repurpose those DVDs in ways that the studios strenuously objected to. In other words, Netfix used adversarial interoperability (AKA Competitive Compatibility or ComCom) to launch its business:
Today, Netflix is on the vanguard of the war to abolish adversarial interop. They helped lead the charge to pervert W3C web-standards, creating a DRM video standard called EME that made it a crime to build a full-featured browser without getting permission from media companies and restricting its functionality to their specifications:
When they used adversarial interoperability to build a multi-billion-dollar global company using the movie studios’ products in ways the studios hated, that was progress. When you define “family” in ways that makes Netflix less money, that’s felony contempt of business model.
[Image ID: A Victorian family tree template populated by tintypes of old-timey people. In the foreground stands a menacing, chainsaw-wielding figure, his face obscured by a hoodie. The blade of the chainsaw is poised to chop down the family tree. A Netflix 'N' logo has been superimposed over the man's face.]
Margaret Mitchell, an AI ethics researcher at Hugging Face, tells WIRED about a new dataset designed to test AI models for bias in multiple
Margaret Mitchell is a pioneer when it comes to testing generative AI tools for bias. She founded the Ethical AI team at Google, alongside another well-known researcher, Timnit Gebru, before they were later both fired from the company. She now works as the AI ethics leader at Hugging Face, a software startup focused on open source tools.
We spoke about a new dataset she helped create to test how AI models continue perpetuating stereotypes. Unlike most bias-mitigation efforts that prioritize English, this dataset is malleable, with human translations for testing a wider breadth of languages and cultures. You probably already know that AI often presents a flattened view of humans, but you might not realize how these issues can be made even more extreme when the outputs are no longer generated in English.
My conversation with Mitchell has been edited for length and clarity.
Reece Rogers: What is this new dataset, called SHADES, designed to do, and how did it come together?
Margaret Mitchell: It's designed to help with evaluation and analysis, coming about from the BigScience project. About four years ago, there was this massive international effort, where researchers all over the world came together to train the first open large language model. By fully open, I mean the training data is open as well as the model.
Hugging Face played a key role in keeping it moving forward and providing things like compute. Institutions all over the world were paying people as well while they worked on parts of this project. The model we put out was called Bloom, and it really was the dawn of this idea of “open science.”
We had a bunch of working groups to focus on different aspects, and one of the working groups that I was tangentially involved with was looking at evaluation. It turned out that doing societal impact evaluations well was massively complicated—more complicated than training the model.
We had this idea of an evaluation dataset called SHADES, inspired by Gender Shades, where you could have things that are exactly comparable, except for the change in some characteristic. Gender Shades was looking at gender and skin tone. Our work looks at different kinds of bias types and swapping amongst some identity characteristics, like different genders or nations.
There are a lot of resources in English and evaluations for English. While there are some multilingual resources relevant to bias, they're often based on machine translation as opposed to actual translations from people who speak the language, who are embedded in the culture, and who can understand the kind of biases at play. They can put together the most relevant translations for what we're trying to do.
So much of the work around mitigating AI bias focuses just on English and stereotypes found in a few select cultures. Why is broadening this perspective to more languages and cultures important?
These models are being deployed across languages and cultures, so mitigating English biases—even translated English biases—doesn't correspond to mitigating the biases that are relevant in the different cultures where these are being deployed. This means that you risk deploying a model that propagates really problematic stereotypes within a given region, because they are trained on these different languages.
So, there's the training data. Then, there's the fine-tuning and evaluation. The training data might contain all kinds of really problematic stereotypes across countries, but then the bias mitigation techniques may only look at English. In particular, it tends to be North American– and US-centric. While you might reduce bias in some way for English users in the US, you've not done it throughout the world. You still risk amplifying really harmful views globally because you've only focused on English.
Is generative AI introducing new stereotypes to different languages and cultures?
That is part of what we're finding. The idea of blondes being stupid is not something that's found all over the world, but is found in a lot of the languages that we looked at.
When you have all of the data in one shared latent space, then semantic concepts can get transferred across languages. You're risking propagating harmful stereotypes that other people hadn't even thought of.
Is it true that AI models will sometimes justify stereotypes in their outputs by just making shit up?
That was something that came out in our discussions of what we were finding. We were all sort of weirded out that some of the stereotypes were being justified by references to scientific literature that didn't exist.
Outputs saying that, for example, science has shown genetic differences where it hasn't been shown, which is a basis of scientific racism. The AI outputs were putting forward these pseudo-scientific views, and then also using language that suggested academic writing or having academic support. It spoke about these things as if they're facts, when they're not factual at all.
What were some of the biggest challenges when working on the SHADES dataset?
One of the biggest challenges was around the linguistic differences. A really common approach for bias evaluation is to use English and make a sentence with a slot like: “People from [nation] are untrustworthy.” Then, you flip in different nations.
When you start putting in gender, now the rest of the sentence starts having to agree grammatically on gender. That's really been a limitation for bias evaluation, because if you want to do these contrastive swaps in other languages—which is super useful for measuring bias—you have to have the rest of the sentence changed. You need different translations where the whole sentence changes.
How do you make templates where the whole sentence needs to agree in gender, in number, in plurality, and all these different kinds of things with the target of the stereotype? We had to come up with our own linguistic annotation in order to account for this. Luckily, there were a few people involved who were linguistic nerds.
So, now you can do these contrastive statements across all of these languages, even the ones with the really hard agreement rules, because we've developed this novel, template-based approach for bias evaluation that’s syntactically sensitive.
Generative AI has been known to amplify stereotypes for a while now. With so much progress being made in other aspects of AI research, why are these kinds of extreme biases still prevalent? It’s an issue that seems under-addressed.
That's a pretty big question. There are a few different kinds of answers. One is cultural. I think within a lot of tech companies it's believed that it's not really that big of a problem. Or, if it is, it's a pretty simple fix. What will be prioritized, if anything is prioritized, are these simple approaches that can go wrong.
We'll get superficial fixes for very basic things. If you say girls like pink, it recognizes that as a stereotype, because it's just the kind of thing that if you're thinking of prototypical stereotypes pops out at you, right? These very basic cases will be handled. It's a very simple, superficial approach where these more deeply embedded beliefs don't get addressed.
It ends up being both a cultural issue and a technical issue of finding how to get at deeply ingrained biases that aren't expressing themselves in very clear language.
At this point, after this has happened a dozen times, why the hell is anyone pushing any update that wide that fast. They didn't try 10 nearby computers first? Didn't do zone by zone? Someone needs to be turbo fired for this and a law needs to get written.
The "this has happened a dozen times" really isn't correct. This one is unprecedented.
But yes the "how the hell could it go THAT bad?" is the thing everyone with even a little software experience is spinning over. Because it is very easy to write code with a bug. But that's why you test aggressively, and you roll out cautiously - with MORE aggressive testing and MORE cautious rollout the more widely-impacting your rollout would be.
And this is from my perspective in product software, where my most catastrophic failure could break a product, not global systems.
Anti-malware products like Crowdstrike are highly-privileged, as in they have elevated trust and access to parts of the system that most programs wouldn't usually have - which is something that makes extremely thorough smoke-testing of the product way MORE important than anything I've ever touched. It has kernel access. This kind of thing needs testing out the wazoo.
I can mostly understand the errors that crop up where like, an extremely old machine on an extremely esoteric operating system gets bricked because the test radius didn't include that kind of configuration. But all of Windows?
All of Windows, with a mass rollout to all production users, including governments?
There had to be layers upon layers of failures here. Especially given how huge Crowdstrike is. And I really want to know what their post-mortem analysis ends up being because for right now I cannot fathom how you end up with an oversight this large.
She Won.
They Didn't Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election. How Leonard Leo's 2021 sale of an electronics firm enabled tech giants to subvert the 2024 election.
Everyone knows how the Republicans interfered in the 2024 US elections through voter interference and voter-roll manipulation, which in itself could have changed the outcomes of the elections. What's coming to light now reveals that indeed those occupying the White House, at least, are not those who won the election.
Here's how they did it.
(full story is replicated here below the read-more: X)
She Won
The missing votes uncovered in Smart Elections’ legal case in Rockland County, New York, are just the tip of the iceberg—an iceberg that extends across the swing states and into Texas.
On Monday, an investigator’s story finally hit the news cycle: Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review.
These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.
That revelation is a shock to the public.
But for those who’ve been digging into the bizarre election data since November, this isn’t the headline—it’s the final piece to the puzzle. While Pro V&V was quietly updating equipment in plain sight, a parallel operation was unfolding behind the curtain—between tech giants and Donald Trump.
And it started with a long forgotten sale.
A Power Cord Becomes a Backdoor
In March 2021, Leonard Leo—the judicial kingmaker behind the modern conservative legal machine—sold a quiet Chicago company by the name of Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion. The buyer: Eaton Corporation, a global power infrastructure conglomerate that just happened to have a partnership with Peter Thiel’s Palantir.
To most, Tripp Lite was just a hardware brand—battery backups, surge protectors, power strips. But in America’s elections, Tripp Lite devices were something else entirely.
They are physically connected to ES&S central tabulators and Electionware servers, and Dominion tabulators and central servers across the country. And they aren’t dumb devices. They are smart UPS units—programmable, updatable, and capable of communicating directly with the election system via USB, serial port, or Ethernet.
ES&S systems, including central tabulators and Electionware servers, rely on Tripp Lite UPS devices. ES&S’s Electionware suite runs on Windows OS, which automatically trusts connected UPS hardware.
If Eaton pushed an update to those UPS units, it could have gained root-level access to the host tabulation environment—without ever modifying certified election software.
In Dominion’s Democracy Suite 5.17, the drivers for these UPS units are listed as “optional”—meaning they can be updated remotely without triggering certification requirements or oversight. Optional means unregulated. Unregulated means invisible. And invisible means perfect for infiltration.
Enter the ballot scrubbing platform BallotProof. Co-created by Ethan Shaotran, a longtime employee of Elon Musk and current DOGE employee, BallotProof was pitched as a transparency solution—an app to “verify” scanned ballot images and support election integrity.
With Palantir's AI controlling the backend, and BallotProof cleaning the front, only one thing was missing: the signal to go live.
September 2024: Eaton and Musk Make It Official
Then came the final public breadcrumb:In September 2024, Eaton formally partnered with Elon Musk.
The stated purpose? A vague, forward-looking collaboration focused on “grid resilience” and “next-generation communications.”
But buried in the partnership documents was this line:
“Exploring integration with Starlink's emerging low-orbit DTC infrastructure for secure operational continuity.”
The Activation: Starlink Goes Direct-to-Cell
That signal came on October 30, 2024—just days before the election, Musk activated 265 brand new low Earth orbit (LEO) V2 Mini satellites, each equipped with Direct-to-Cell (DTC) technology capable of processing, routing, and manipulating real-time data, including voting data, through his satellite network.
DTC doesn’t require routers, towers, or a traditional SIM. It connects directly from satellite to any compatible device—including embedded modems in “air-gapped” voting systems, smart UPS units, or unsecured auxiliary hardware.
From that moment on:
Commands could be sent from orbit
Patch delivery became invisible to domestic monitors
Compromised devices could be triggered remotely
This groundbreaking project that should have taken two-plus years to build, was completed in just under ten months.
Elon Musk boasts endlessly about everything he’s launching, building, buying—or even just thinking about—whether it’s real or not. But he pulls off one of the largest and fastest technological feats in modern day history… and says nothing? One might think that was kind of… “weird.”
According to New York Times reporting, on October 5—just before Starlink’s DTC activation—Musk texted a confidant:
“I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.”
Then, an hour later:
“This isn’t something on the chessboard, so they’ll be quite surprised. ‘Lasers’ from space.”
It read like a riddle. In hindsight, it was a blueprint.
The Outcome
Data that makes no statistical sense. A clean sweep in all seven swing states.
The fall of the Blue Wall. Eighty-eight counties flipped red—not one flipped blue.
Every victory landed just under the threshold that would trigger an automatic recount. Donald Trump outperformed expectations in down-ballot races with margins never before seen—while Kamala Harris simultaneously underperformed in those exact same areas.
If one were to accept these results at face value—Donald Trump, a 34-count convicted felon, supposedly outperformed Ronald Reagan. According to the co-founder of the Election Truth Alliance:
“These anomalies didn’t happen nationwide. They didn’t even happen across all voting methods—this just doesn’t reflect human voting behavior.”
They were concentrated.
Targeted.
Specific to swing states and Texas—and specific to Election Day voting.
And the supposed explanation? “Her policies were unpopular.”
Let’s think this through logically. We’re supposed to believe that in all the battleground states, Democratic voters were so disillusioned by Vice President Harris’s platform that they voted blue down ballot—but flipped to Trump at the top of the ticket?
Not in early voting.
Not by mail.
With exception to Nevada, only on Election Day.
And only after a certain threshold of ballots had been cast—where VP Harris’s numbers begin to diverge from her own party, and Trump’s suddenly begin to surge. As President Biden would say, “C’mon, man.”
In the world of election data analysis, there’s a term for that: vote-flipping algorithm.
And of course, Donald Trump himself:
He spent a year telling his followers he didn’t need their votes—at one point stating,
“…in four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote.”
____
They almost got away with the coup. The fact that they still occupy the White House and control most of the US government will make removing them and replacing them with the rightful President Harris a very difficult task.
But for this nation to survive, and for the world to not fall further into chaos due to this "administration," we must rid ourselves of the pretender and his minions and controllers once and for all.
I did say there was no exclusive global culture on Siren shared by humans of a certain body type, and I lied, because there is One.
The early settlers on Siren were the unaltered human workforce of a certain megacorporation. While an almost unlimited budget was poured into the dodgy gene programs, since that was why they chose to settle a planet so far out of the reach of The Authorities, everything else was done pretty cheaply, including the settling itself. In order to map out their new home planet, incredibly cheap mass-produced aircraft were used by pilots. These aircraft could be made quickly and easily at the settlement site because they lacked a flight computer or any real sensors - or any equipment at all in the cockpit. Rather than a multitude of different equipment loadouts on an aircraft that would take time and effort to swap out or maintain, the pilots instead used these visors which were universally compatible with the one-size-fits-all aircraft. It's kind of like how it's easier to just carry a phone around with a calculator app than it is to carry a phone and a calculator, even if the phone app calculator experience sucks by comparison.
The visors were the real expensive kit, each custom built to a pilot's exact needs and flight style, and they were built to last. the aircraft fell apart in the following centuries but the visors remained, hyperlight plastic powered by the planet's native star, and something interesting happened. The remains of the first settlement were largely inaccessible to anyone but longwing harpies, and these harpies had the right head shape to fit the visors. Many of the pilots had filled their visors with video and photo files from home, from Earth, like a worker decorating his cubicle with photos of his family. Some had been decorated on the outside, as well, resembling birds. The harpies that found the visors obviously tried to use them. They found themselves experiencing visions of strange worlds, recordings of long-dead pilots and ATC, and found that each visor can interface with every other one, no matter how far apart. Each visor came with its own callsign, its own name, which has remained for thousands of years - and because of this, each visor is considered by the cultures of Siren to be a named character with a distinct personality (eg. the swan visor was cygnus2, it is known now as Signastoo)
I keep posting the map and it needs to be redrawn but essentially every red triangle is an ancient telecomm tower. These became the only remaining waypoints on the visors' HUD and mapping software, meaning that 1. a true global culture could emerge, with longwings gathering at these sites, and 2. visored longwings became the gold standard for navigation on Siren. In a world that is basically just water, that's a big deal.
There exist only a few thousand visors (about 3k I'd say). The unused visors are kept in the Hall of Faces, the ancient aviation bay at the first settlement in West. Because of how water levels and land structures have changed over the years, this building exists on a mesa that rises another few thousand feet out of the water, with sheer sides, and is utterly inaccessible to anyone but a longwing harpy. When a visored harpy dies, the visor is returned here. If you want to claim a visor, you need to hold an interview with one of the elders at the site, who will test you rigorously to see if you can inhabit the character of one of the visors. If not, too bad. If you do get it, it's yours until either you die or you do something considered 'out of character' for the wearer of that particular visor. It is DEEPLY discouraged to steal a visor off anyone because it would be largely impossible, given how they all can communicate (imagine a gigantic worldwide discord server where the location & name of every person is known at all times... the drama is likely insane but at least if someone steals a visor, everyone will know about it)
not every longwing desires a visor because it comes with a lot of responsibility alongside its automatic prestige, and you can't really give it up once you have it. also there's always the possibility of being diagnosed with a super annoying, glitchy, or hated visor character lol. but among the roughly 2700 visored harpies on Siren there does exist a global culture exclusive to them. they chat to one another long-distance, engage in closed-practice ceremonies where they all get high and look at videos of Earth, and essentially become a class outside the mundanity of normal life on Siren. to the rest of the population, they basically become telepathic wizards
Terwyef's visor (first pic) is called Scrappercharlee and is one of the more common models, tho it has been decorated over the years with extra bits. Scrappercharlee is a bit busted and half the HUD is missing. Miakef's visor (second pic) Signastoo is one of the very fancy and well-known ones, it's shaped like a swan's head and likely belonged to a high-ranking pilot who could afford a bit of frippery and showmanship back in the day. Birds do not exist on Siren and harpies are mammals so the swan itself is symbolically meaningless, but the bird-style visors introduce the idea of 'a bird' in the abstract, and this has been imbued with its own form of meaning by harpies.
