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dulcewrites · 1 year

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I had this headcanon about how Aemond still frequently suffers from chronic headaches because of his eye but refused to take milk of the poppy because it made him feel all light headed and, well just… drunk in general, so he didn’t want to put himself into such a vulnerable position but then when he and Myrah marry she eventually convinces him to take it from time to time when the pain got really bad and when he does they always stay in their chambers, Aemond lying in bed, feeling high out of his mind, and Myrah sits on his torso, doing silly things like cleaning his Aura and attempting ASMR and so on. Aemond would probably act embarrassed afterwards because he’s wayyy to serious for all that stuff but secretly he enjoys it a lot

Oh I love this. Especially the cleaning his aura and attempting asmr part. They are very astrology gf and stock market bf coded. One of the reasons why he loves her so much is how carefree and weird and warm she is. It makes him feel young… which he is! He has been to be uptight for so long out of necessity and as a barrier. It is easy for everyone to forget he’s basically a baby. He’s only in his early 20s (in this universe at least)

AND this gave me an idea that myrah would be so interested in magic especially the Hightowers connection to alchemy and necromancy. She probably tries her hand at stuff (and in theory fails 💀)

now I have to write this

Bewitched by You

The aches always started the same. A tingle at the top of his head that traveled all the way down and pricked the tip of his toes. Despite the years of experiencing them, Aemond was still a shock when the pain in his head traveled through his body. A dull pain settling in his bones.

They sneak up on him at times, and during each one that happens, Myrah would plead the same thing.

“Please, just a little bit of it. I know it will make you feel better.”

He had taken milk of the poppy before. When he was younger and the scar still healed, he was all but take it by the maesters. It did help with the pain, but he hated the fuzzy feeling that came with it. How he strangely was unaware yet hyperaware of everything going on around him. The next day, his mother would smile sweetly saying he was quite cute while on it.

Her only other experience with dealing with someone on milk of the poppy was a surly, useless old man with rotting flesh. Of course, he would be cute compared to that.

But Myrah would beg. Her eyes would get wide and sad. A similar look Alicent would give him when he was in pain. If there was any worse pain than the headaches, it was seeing them upset.

So, when his head begins to pound after dinner, it takes little convincing on her part for him to finally take some. Myrah makes him change into something more comfortable, and brushes his hair. By the time milk of the poppy is brought to their chambers, the moon was rising in the sky, and the fires within the castle ablaze and flickering.

He watches Myrah, who floats around the room like a fairy. Lighting the oil lamps, dark curls dancing behind her and a girlish frolic in her step. It makes him wonder what their children will look like. More Targaryen or more like her family? He tries to imagine a younger version of himself with her hair, or gods willing, her eyes.

Once done tending to the lamps, she comes to stand near the bed, the strap of her night gown falling on her shoulder.

“How do you feel?”

“You’re pretty,” is the first thing that came to his mind. Myrah laughs and it chimes like bells in his head.

“Feeling better, I assume,” she rearranges the pillows. “Why don’t you lie down.”

She tucks him in as if he is a child. Humming a hymn before leaning down and kissing him on the forehead. She leans up with a sudden gasp.

“You know what we should do,” she beams.

Aemond just blinks, eye trained on her. A part of him wants bury his face in her chest to get whiff of lavender he got meer seconds ago. But he does not think that is what she meant.

“Daeron sent me a special book from Oldtown,” she nods. “And I have learned to properly get rid of negative spirits in a room, and the negative aura that follows someone.”

Aemond just continues to stare, before a giggle bubbles up his throat. The pain is his head now replaced with a floaty lightness. The earnest nature of his wife only makes him like he’s on a cloud. Myrah crosses her arms, with a frown.

“I am serious, Aemond.”

She turns towards the desk in the room, picking up large brown book. Comically big in her small arms. She flips the pages furiously, before taking a deep breath and closing her eyes dramatically. Aemond watches as she begins to chant something he cannot recognize. Words he has never heard before. He watches and watches, a smile on his face. It goes on for minutes.

When she is done, she turns to him with a proud look on her face. “That was really poweful. Did you feel that?”

He is sure he is married to one of the strangest women in Westeros, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Yes, my love, I felt it.”

#Aemond actual wife guy targaryen #fcc asks

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reality-detective · 5 months

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HIGHEST IMPORTANCE ‼️

Today or tomorrow The Government Will Vote For The Biden Administration To Take TOTAL CONTROL Of The Internet

President Biden's Plan to Give the Administrative State Effective Control of all Internet Services and Infrastructure in the U.S.

FCC Commissioner, The Joe Biden Administration Has Put Together & Is Planning On Implementing The Most Comprehensive Internet Censorship/ Control Plan In History. The Government Will Assume “Effective Control Of All Internet Services”

Elon musk you definitely need to see this. 👀

The Biden administration has just put forward a plan for digital equity. And it is a plan for all internet services and all infrastructure.

According to FCC Commissioner Carr, President Biden's plan hands the administrative state effective control of all internet services and infrastructure in the country. Never before in the roughly 40-year history of the public internet has the FCC, or any federal agency for that matter, claimed this degree of control over it.

The plan calls for the FCC to apply a far-reaching set of government controls that the agency has not applied to any technology in the modern era.

You got that? This has never been done before. No communication devices have ever had this kind of control suggested by the government, let alone applied.

He went on and said, Congress never contemplated the sweeping regulatory regime that president Biden asked the FCC to adopt, let alone authorize the agency to implement it. Here's what's happening. As with everything else the Biden administration is doing, his broadband policies are failing and the building of internet infrastructure in this country, uh, the price of it has gone through the roof.

FCC wants new 5G broadband services, but it's all needlessly been blocked and delayed by new broadband infrastructure regulatory red tape. So the government is blocking the private sector from doing it and then using that to say, see, we need to take complete control.

This is breathtaking control of all information.

The rules, the the rules that are suggested and are going to be voted on, quick, hurry, next week, the federal government has a roving mandate to micromanage nearly every aspect of how the internet functions. 🤔

Are you ready for this? 🤔

#pay attention #educate yourselves #educate yourself #reeducate yourself #knowledge is power #reeducate yourselves #think for yourselves #think about it #think for yourself #do your homework #do your own research #do some research #ask yourself questions #question everything #fcc #government corruption #5g

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spoopy-eneko · 2 months

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hi!! just wanted to know that you inspired me to get into fursuit making and i'm basically done with my first headbase of my main sona!! i'm having a ton of fun and your youtube channel has been an absolute godsend, just wanted to let you know your work is appreciated <3

AWWWWHHHH omg thank you anon!!!! I'm so happy I could help with my videos!! I love messages like this, you just made my day <3 I love putting info out there to help people make their own suits!!

#positive #anon #ask #fcc #freckled cat creations

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despite-everything · 1 year

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I came from your post about being a station manager and the call number for the radio station : welcome to night vale, and I was curious to what FFC guidelines Cecil has broken in your opinion. -Kai

This is such a cool question to receive. Overall, I’d say that Cecil isn’t doing badly in terms of FCC violations, but there are definitely some red flags. Some can be dismissed, however, due to typical Night Vale weirdness.

Station Identification

In order to be compliant with FCC standards, a terrestrial radio station must identify itself when signing on and off for the day (24-hour stations do not have to do this), and must broadcast identifications as close to the start of each hour of operation as possible. We could suggest that the station is 24-hour, or that Cecil broadcasts for less than an hour at a time, but neither of those things really solve the matter. If we interpret Cecil’s “goodnight” at the end of each episode as the station signing off for the night, then he should be identifying the station’s call letters, followed by “Night Vale”. He could also add the station’s channel number, frequency, the name of the licensee, or other communities it reaches (as long as the licensed community is listed first). Even if Cecil isn’t really the last thing being broadcast, we know that he has to be on air for hours at a time, and we never hear call letters. Plus, it’s generally standard practice for hosts to include identifying information during their show, even if it isn’t occurring exactly on the hour. I suppose you could also argue that while he’s on air for long stretches of time, there’s some time dilation in-universe or through the format of the podcast which gives us shorter episodes, and you could argue that in that “missing time” between what is lived in Night Vale and what we hear in the podcast there are instances of station identification, but I don’t buy it.

2. Programming Inciting Imminent Lawless Action

This violates FCC regulations, but would be prosecuted by law enforcement agencies, rather than the FCC. Would it result in fines? I’m sure. But still. The government can regulate speech if it’s intended to incite what is considered to be “imminent lawless action” and likely to produce such action. “Kill your double”, people. Though this is Night Vale, and instances like that may not really be a lawful concern. But if we’re assuming the FCC has jurisdiction in Night Vale, so too does federal law, which outlaws murder (18 USC Ch. 51: Homicide).

3. News Distortion

Let’s be honest with ourselves here. Cecil frequently misrepresents the facts. Broadcast licensees are prohibited from intentionally distorting the news, which Cecil has been known to do. This is something that would require extensive documentation to pursue, but it would be doable. That being said, in Night Vale? Yeah. He’s fine. Cecil sometimes has to distort the news in order to appease The Powers That Be and keep himself safe, and he’s also a bitchy guy who will happily present falsehoods on air if need be. But if we’re taking this thought exercise seriously, I’d add this as a violation.

But other than those? I can’t think of any outright violations on the top of my head! Some things came to mind, but Cecil stayed within the legal exceptions. For example, it is not permissible to broadcast advertisements for or information surrounding lotteries except in special cases. One such exception is if the lottery is hosted by the same community/government to which the broadcasting license is assigned, meaning the Lottery in Night Vale, which is mandatory for all citizens and occurs at City Hall, is an event Cecil can broadcast about if the station license is assigned to Night Vale as a locality. The nature of the Night Vale Lottery might also prove to be an exemption, but still, I think it makes a good example for barely skating by the rules.

I’ll admit that I work at a station that has a pretty unique licensing status (once described to me as a “unicorn” scenario: we are a non-commercial station with licensing that nearly mimics a commercial station. It’s weird.), and some regulations that impact non-commercial stations like mine wouldn’t apply for Cecil’s station, so when I listen to the show I notice stuff that wouldn’t fly at my station, but is totally okay at his. Additionally, I may have missed some things! These were just what came to mind when replying, and the only thing I looked up was confirmation that murder was a federal crime (since I knew that it's only prosecuted as a federal crime in certain cases, I almost tripped myself up. But like. Duh.) lol.

I'd say the biggest issue for me (beyond not identifying the station) is the incitement of murder. Yes, this regulation requires that whatever incitement being broadcast must be likely to occur, but like... with the way Cecil functions on air? It counts. Look at what happened to Telly. He can make things happen, y'all, and even if he couldn't, him advocating murder on-air being followed by people committing murder would be pretty damning.

Thanks for asking!!

#this was so fun to think through #i could also be missing some - i dont have every single fcc guideline fully memorized lol #these were just what i was thinking of #wtnv #welcome to night vale #cecil palmer #asks #tree talks #night vale community radio #nvcr

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chrollohearttags · 9 months

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and don’t let cherry be writing a reiner fic

😩😩😩😩😩

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8N64C6n/

HEJSHJS! Hello 😭😭😭 that man be bringing out my WORST. I turn into a different person every time I write smut for him.

#like it’s gone get me banned by the FCC next #cherry’s asks 🍒#cherry’s sweetpeas 🌷🍒#but that’s my man and I can’t help it 😩😩#queued posts

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askfentoncrackshellcabrera · 1 year

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I just realized your initials spell FCC. Weird right?

Hmmm... that is a very interesting coincidence... strange... but I don't know a whole lot about the Federal Communications Commision...

#fenton crackshell cabrera #ducktales fenton #ducktales #ducktales 2017 #ducktales 17 #ducktales reboot #fenton cabrera #ask #asks open #send me asks #send asks #m'ma cabrera #fcc #federal communications commission

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taviokapudding · 2 years

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FCC: APPLE AND GOOGLE, BAN TIKTOK FORM YOUR PLATFORMS FOR STEALING EVERYONE’S INFO

Everyone: bruh you just want to control what we all consume, wtf

Me, being unable to update my phone number after tiktok turned on 2 step verification without my authorization during June 2022, wondering if any of these exchanges this past week were actually legal after realizing there is no way for users to find out when we created our account & not being told if I guessed correctly.

#mun post #no but seriously do any of you know if this was allowed?#i need #lawyer #side of tumblr to weigh in because I genuinely had my time wasted and gave them all the info they asked for because apparently you have too #i didn’t have Facebook linked and yet they still insisted I needed to hand that info over #tiktok #fcc #tiktok ban

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odinsblog · 2 months

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This year’s Super Bowl was a weapon of mass distraction. If there’s any justice, future generations will remember the game not for Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, or Taylor Swift but for the US-funded attacks on Palestinian civilians that occurred while so many Americans were glued to their TVs. During the game, watched by well over 100 million people in the United States, Israel launched a bombing raid of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, the most densely populated area on earth. More than 1 million people had fled now-leveled Gaza City to the refugee camps in Rafah and surrounding areas. Palestinians who have survived previous Israeli strikes are now staving off disease, destitution, and fear.

Meanwhile, CBS granted the Israeli government space for an ad about the 130 hostages left in Gaza. This ad, meant to build public support and justify the slaughter of nearly 30,000 civilians in Gaza, spurred 10,000 people to register complaints with the FCC, because the commercial did not disclose that a foreign government had paid for it. Coupled with the Rafah raid, this looks more like military synergy than happenstance.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft also spent $7 million on an ad from his organization Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism. It features Clarence Jones, a 93-year-old former speech writer for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kraft and other pro-war billionaires use the memory of King so much, they should be paying his family indulgences for slandering his name. The ad failed to mention that Kraft has given $1 million to pro-war AIPAC and donated $1 million in 2016 to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Given that Kraft says that the Nazi march in Charlottesville was his motivation to start his foundation (Charlottesville was the one with “good people on both sides,” according to Trump), his hypocrisy is insidious.

Kraft and Israel want the same thing: a blank check to uproot Palestinians from Gaza and build settlements. One can also only imagine if a peace organization tried to buy an ad asking Israel and the United States the question: “How many dead children will be enough?” I suspect it would be denied faster than a public-service announcement about concussions.

(continue reading)

#politics #palestine #gaza #rafah #israel #robert kraft #super bowl massacre #super bowl #stop jewish hate #all eyes on rafah #hasbara #aipac

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zeppelindageni · 11 months

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26. List out their immediate family. With how their relationship stands (good/bad) and if you have a faceclaim you picture for them.

Meu pai: temos uma relação ótima. Beijo paizinho.

Meu irmão mais novo: meu melhor amigo.

Todos os tios: são ok

Meu irmão mais velho: seu insuportável, devolve todos os meus lanches que eu sei que você rouba.

#não vou usar fc porque não quero limitar ninguém de fcc #ask game

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incorrectbatfam · 1 year

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the times the batfamily gets a visit from the alphabet agencies. i remember Barbs homework got her a visit by CIA in one of the ask.

Babs had a computer science assignment examined by the CIA. The CIA also paid her a second visit when she tweeted the location of the Navy's largest aircraft carrier

The FDA had to set more specific guidelines after Steph filmed herself cooking Benadryl Chicken

Wayne Enterprises got a visit from the EEOC after Tim jokingly called himself the token bisexual

Kate has beef with the TVA. No one knows why

Damian is banned from within 500 feet of USDA offices

Carrie got told off by a retired EPA worker for accidentally forgetting a water bottle at the park

Duke got an internship at NASA

Harper can't ship her taser parts through USPS

Cullen's fanfic was taken down by the FCC

Cass actually found the FBI agent watching her. They're getting coffee on Sunday

TSA pulled Selina aside for further inspection because of cat claws in her carry-on

Dick butt dialed the DOJ

Bruce got the Batmobile registered at the Metropolis DMV after a worker at the Gotham one said Batman looked like Bruce Wayne

Jason visited the Marvel universe and pissed off SHIELD

Alfred is always one step ahead of the IRS…

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

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In defense of bureaucratic competence

Sure, sometimes it really does make sense to do your own research. There's times when you really do need to take personal responsibility for the way things are going. But there's limits. We live in a highly technical world, in which hundreds of esoteric, potentially lethal factors impinge on your life every day.

You can't "do your own research" to figure out whether all that stuff is safe and sound. Sure, you might be able to figure out whether a contractor's assurances about a new steel joist for your ceiling are credible, but after you do that, are you also going to independently audit the software in your car's antilock brakes?

How about the nutritional claims on your food and the sanitary conditions in the industrial kitchen it came out of? If those turn out to be inadequate, are you going to be able to validate the medical advice you get in the ER when you show up at 3AM with cholera? While you're trying to figure out the #HIPAAWaiver they stuck in your hand on the way in?

40 years ago, Ronald Reagan declared war on "the administrative state," and "government bureaucrats" have been the favored bogeyman of the American right ever since. Even if Steve Bannon hasn't managed to get you to froth about the "Deep State," there's a good chance that you've griped about red tape from time to time.

Not without reason, mind you. The fact that the government can make good rules doesn't mean it will. When we redid our kitchen this year, the city inspector added a bunch of arbitrary electrical outlets to the contractor's plans in places where neither we, nor any future owner, will every need them.

But the answer to bad regulation isn't no regulation. During the same kitchen reno, our contractor discovered that at some earlier time, someone had installed our kitchen windows without the accompanying vapor-barriers. In the decades since, the entire structure of our kitchen walls had rotted out. Not only was the entire front of our house one good earthquake away from collapsing – there were two half rotted verticals supporting the whole thing – but replacing the rotted walls added more than $10k to the project.

In other words, the problem isn't too much regulation, it's the wrong regulation. I want our city inspectors to make sure that contractors install vapor barriers, but to not demand superfluous electrical outlets.

Which raises the question: where do regulations come from? How do we get them right?

Regulation is, first and foremost, a truth-seeking exercise. There will never be one obvious answer to any sufficiently technical question. "Should this window have a vapor barrier?" is actually a complex question, needing to account for different window designs, different kinds of barriers, etc.

To make a regulation, regulators ask experts to weigh in. At the federal level, expert agencies like the DoT or the FCC or HHS will hold a "Notice of Inquiry," which is a way to say, "Hey, should we do something about this? If so, what should we do?"

Anyone can weigh in on these: independent technical experts, academics, large companies, lobbyists, industry associations, members of the public, hobbyist groups, and swivel-eyed loons. This produces a record from which the regulator crafts a draft regulation, which is published in something called a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking."

The NPRM process looks a lot like the NOI process: the regulator publishes the rule, the public weighs in for a couple of rounds of comments, and the regulator then makes the rule (this is the federal process; state regulation and local ordinances vary, but they follow a similar template of collecting info, making a proposal, collecting feedback and finalizing the proposal).

These truth-seeking exercises need good input. Even very competent regulators won't know everything, and even the strongest theoretical foundation needs some evidence from the field. It's one thing to say, "Here's how your antilock braking software should work," but you also need to hear from mechanics who service cars, manufacturers, infosec specialists and drivers.

These people will disagree with each other, for good reasons and for bad ones. Some will be sincere but wrong. Some will want to make sure that their products or services are required – or that their competitors' products and services are prohibited.

It's the regulator's job to sort through these claims. But they don't have to go it alone: in an ideal world, the wrong people will be corrected by other parties in the docket, who will back up their claims with evidence.

So when the FCC proposes a Net Neutrality rule, the monopoly telcos and cable operators will pile in and insist that this is technically impossible, that there is no way to operate a functional ISP if the network management can't discriminate against traffic that is less profitable to the carrier. Now, this unity of perspective might reflect a bedrock truth ("Net Neutrality can't work") or a monopolists' convenient lie ("Net Neutrality is less profitable for us").

In a competitive market, there'd be lots of counterclaims with evidence from rivals: "Of course Net Neutrality is feasible, and here are our server logs to prove it!" But in a monopolized markets, those counterclaims come from micro-scale ISPs, or academics, or activists, or subscribers. These counterclaims are easy to dismiss ("what do you know about supporting 100 million users?"). That's doubly true when the regulator is motivated to give the monopolists what they want – either because they are hoping for a job in the industry after they quit government service, or because they came out of industry and plan to go back to it.

To make things worse, when an industry is heavily concentrated, it's easy for members of the ruling cartel – and their backers in government – to claim that the only people who truly understand the industry are its top insiders. Seen in that light, putting an industry veteran in charge of the industry's regulator isn't corrupt – it's sensible.

All of this leads to regulatory capture – when a regulator starts defending an industry from the public interest, instead of defending the public from the industry. The term "regulatory capture" has a checkered history. It comes out of a bizarre, far-right Chicago School ideology called "Public Choice Theory," whose goal is to eliminate regulation, not fix it.

In Public Choice Theory, the biggest companies in an industry have the strongest interest in capturing the regulator, and they will work harder – and have more resources – than anyone else, be they members of the public, workers, or smaller rivals. This inevitably leads to capture, where the state becomes an arm of the dominant companies, wielded by them to prevent competition:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

This is regulatory nihilism. It supposes that the only reason you weren't killed by your dinner, or your antilock brakes, or your collapsing roof, is that you just got lucky – and not because we have actual, good, sound regulations that use evidence to protect us from the endless lethal risks we face. These nihilists suppose that making good regulation is either a myth – like ancient Egyptian sorcery – or a lost art – like the secret to embalming Pharaohs.

But it's clearly possible to make good regulations – especially if you don't allow companies to form monopolies or cartels. What's more, failing to make public regulations isn't the same as getting rid of regulation. In the absence of public regulation, we get private regulation, run by companies themselves.

Think of Amazon. For decades, the DoJ and FTC sat idly by while Amazon assembled and fortified its monopoly. Today, Amazon is the de facto e-commerce regulator. The company charges its independent sellers 45-51% in junk fees to sell on the platform, including $31b/year in "advertising" to determine who gets top billing in your searches. Vendors raise their Amazon prices in order to stay profitable in the face of these massive fees, and if they don't raise their prices at every other store and site, Amazon downranks them to oblivion, putting them out of business.

This is the crux of the FTC's case against Amazon: that they are picking winners and setting prices across the entire economy, including at every other retailer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The same is true for Google/Facebook, who decide which news and views you encounter; for Apple/Google, who decide which apps you can use, and so on. The choice is never "government regulation" or "no regulation" – it's always "government regulation" or "corporate regulation." You either live by rules made in public by democratically accountable bureaucrats, or rules made in private by shareholder-accountable executives.

You just can't solve this by "voting with your wallet." Think about the problem of robocalls. Nobody likes these spam calls, and worse, they're a vector for all kinds of fraud. Robocalls are mostly a problem with federation. The phone system is a network-of-networks, and your carrier is interconnected with carriers all over the world, sometimes through intermediaries that make it hard to know which network a call originates on.

Some of these carriers are spam-friendly. They make money by selling access to spammers and scammers. Others don't like spam, but they have lax or inadequate security measures to prevent robocalls. Others will simply be targets of opportunity: so large and well-resourced that they are irresistible to bad actors, who continuously probe their defenses and exploit overlooked flaws, which are quickly patched.

To stem the robocall tide, your phone company will have to block calls from bad actors, put sloppy or lazy carriers on notice to shape up or face blocks, and also tell the difference between good companies and bad ones.

There's no way you can figure this out on your own. How can you know whether your carrier is doing a good job at this? And even if your carrier wants to do this, only the largest, most powerful companies can manage it. Rogue carriers won't give a damn if some tiny micro-phone-company threatens them with a block if they don't shape up.

This is something that a large, powerful government agency is best suited to addressing. And thankfully, we have such an agency. Two years ago, the FCC demanded that phone companies submit plans for "robocall mitigation." Now, it's taking action:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/telcos-filed-blank-robocall-plans-with-fcc-and-got-away-with-it-for-2-years/

Specifically, the FCC has identified carriers – in the US and abroad – with deficient plans. Some of these plans are very deficient. National Cloud Communications of Texas sent the FCC a Windows Printer Test Page. Evernex (Pakistan) sent the FCC its "taxpayer profile inquiry" from a Pakistani state website. Viettel (Vietnam) sent in a slide presentation entitled "Making Smart Cities Vision a Reality." Canada's Humbolt VoIP sent an "indiscernible object." DomainerSuite submitted a blank sheet of paper scrawled with the word "NOTHING."

The FCC has now notified these carriers – and others with less egregious but still deficient submissions – that they have 14 days to fix this or they'll be cut off from the US telephone network.

This is a problem you don't fix with your wallet, but with your ballot. Effective, public-interest-motivated FCC regulators are a political choice. Trump appointed the cartoonishly evil Ajit Pai to run the FCC, and he oversaw a program of neglect and malice. Pai – a former Verizon lawyer – dismantled Net Neutrality after receiving millions of obviously fraudulent comments from stolen identities, lying about it, and then obstructing the NY Attorney General's investigation into the matter:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/31/and-drown-it/#starve-the-beast

The Biden administration has a much better FCC – though not as good as it could be, thanks to Biden hanging Gigi Sohn out to dry in the face of a homophobic smear campaign that ultimately led one of the best qualified nominees for FCC commissioner to walk away from the process:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/15/useful-idiotsuseful-idiots/#unrequited-love

Notwithstanding the tragic loss of Sohn's leadership in this vital agency, Biden's FCC – and its action on robocalls – illustrates the value of elections won with ballots, not wallets.

Self-regulation without state regulation inevitably devolves into farce. We're a quarter of a century into the commercial internet and the US still doesn't have a modern federal privacy law. The closest we've come is a disclosure rule, where companies can make up any policy they want, provided they describe it to you.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out how to cheat on this regulation. It's so simple, even a Meta lawyer can figure it out – which is why the Meta Quest VR headset has a privacy policy isn't merely awful, but long.

It will take you five hours to read the whole document and discover how badly you're being screwed. Go ahead, "do your own research":

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/annual-creep-o-meter/

The answer to bad regulation is good regulation, and the answer to incompetent regulators is competent ones. As Michael Lewis's Fifth Risk (published after Trump filled the administrative agencies with bootlickers, sociopaths and crooks) documented, these jobs demand competence:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/11/27/the-fifth-risk-michael-lewis-explains-how-the-deep-state-is-just-nerds-versus-grifters/

For example, Lewis describes how a Washington State nuclear waste facility created as part of the Manhattan Project endangers the Columbia River, the source of 8 million Americans' drinking water. The nuclear waste cleanup is projected to take 100 years and cost 100 billion dollars. With stakes that high, we need competent bureaucrats overseeing the job.

The hacky conservative jokes comparing every government agency to the DMV are not descriptive so much as prescriptive. By slashing funding, imposing miserable working conditions, and demonizing the people who show up for work anyway, neoliberals have chased away many good people, and hamstrung those who stayed.

One of the most inspiring parts of the Biden administration is the large number of extremely competent, extremely principled agency personnel he appointed, and the speed and competence they've brought to their roles, to the great benefit of the American public:

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

But leaders can only do so much – they also need staff. 40 years of attacks on US state capacity has left the administrative state in tatters, stretched paper-thin. In an excellent article, Noah Smith describes how a starveling American bureaucracy costs the American public a fortune:

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-needs-a-bigger-better-bureaucracy

Even stripped of people and expertise, the US government still needs to get stuff done, so it outsources to nonprofits and consultancies. These are the source of much of the expense and delay in public projects. Take NYC's Second Avenue subway, a notoriously overbudget and late subway extension – "the most expensive mile of subway ever built." Consultants amounted to 20% of its costs, double what France or Italy would have spent. The MTA used to employ 1,600 project managers. Now it has 124 of them, overseeing $20b worth of projects. They hand that money to consultants, and even if they have the expertise to oversee the consultants' spending, they are stretched too thin to do a good job of it:

https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html

When a public agency lacks competence, it ends up costing the public more. States with highly expert Departments of Transport order better projects, which need fewer changes, which adds up to massive costs savings and superior roads:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4522676

Other gaps in US regulation are plugged by nonprofits and citizen groups. Environmental rules like NEPA rely on the public to identify and object to environmental risks in public projects, from solar plants to new apartment complexes. NEPA and its state equivalents empower private actors to sue developers to block projects, even if they satisfy all environmental regulations, leading to years of expensive delay.

The answer to this isn't to dismantle environmental regulations – it's to create a robust expert bureaucracy that can enforce them instead of relying on NIMBYs. This is called "ministerial approval" – when skilled government workers oversee environmental compliance. Predictably, NIMBYs hate ministerial approval.

Which is not to say that there aren't problems with trusting public enforcers to ensure that big companies are following the law. Regulatory capture is real, and the more concentrated an industry is, the greater the risk of capture. We are living in a moment of shocking market concentration, thanks to 40 years of under-regulation:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Remember that five-hour privacy policy for a Meta VR headset? One answer to these eye-glazing garbage novellas presented as "privacy policies" is to simply ban certain privacy-invading activities. That way, you can skip the policy, knowing that clicking "I agree" won't expose you to undue risk.

This is the approach that Bennett Cyphers and I argue for in our EFF white-paper, "Privacy Without Monopoly":

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

After all, even the companies that claim to be good for privacy aren't actually very good for privacy. Apple blocked Facebook from spying on iPhone owners, then sneakily turned on their own mass surveillance system, and lied about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

But as the European experiment with the GDPR has shown, public administrators can't be trusted to have the final word on privacy, because of regulatory capture. Big Tech companies like Google, Apple and Facebook pretend to be headquartered in corporate crime havens like Ireland and Luxembourg, where the regulators decline to enforce the law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

It's only because of the GPDR has a private right of action – the right of individuals to sue to enforce their rights – that we're finally seeing the beginning of the end of commercial surveillance in Europe:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/americans-deserve-more-current-american-data-privacy-protection-act

It's true that NIMBYs can abuse private rights of action, bringing bad faith cases to slow or halt good projects. But just as the answer to bad regulations is good ones, so too is the answer to bad private rights of action good ones. SLAPP laws have shown us how to balance vexatious litigation with the public interest:

https://www.rcfp.org/resources/anti-slapp-laws/

We must get over our reflexive cynicism towards public administration. In my book The Internet Con, I lay out a set of public policy proposals for dismantling Big Tech and putting users back in charge of their digital lives:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

The most common objection I've heard since publishing the book is, "Sure, Big Tech has enshittified everything great about the internet, but how can we trust the government to fix it?"

We've been conditioned to think that lawmakers are too old, too calcified and too corrupt, to grasp the technical nuances required to regulate the internet. But just because Congress isn't made up of computer scientists, it doesn't mean that they can't pass good laws relating to computers. Congress isn't full of microbiologists, but we still manage to have safe drinking water (most of the time).

You can't just "do the research" or "vote with your wallet" to fix the internet. Bad laws – like the DMCA, which bans most kinds of reverse engineering – can land you in prison just for reconfiguring your own devices to serve you, rather than the shareholders of the companies that made them. You can't fix that yourself – you need a responsive, good, expert, capable government to fix it.

We can have that kind of government. It'll take some doing, because these questions are intrinsically hard to get right even without monopolies trying to capture their regulators. Even a president as flawed as Biden can be pushed into nominating good administrative personnel and taking decisive, progressive action:

https://doctorow.medium.com/joe-biden-is-headed-to-a-uaw-picket-line-in-detroit-f80bd0b372ab?sk=f3abdfd3f26d2f615ad9d2f1839bcc07

Biden may not be doing enough to suit your taste. I'm certainly furious with aspects of his presidency. The point isn't to lionize Biden – it's to point out that even very flawed leaders can be pushed into producing benefit for the American people. Think of how much more we can get if we don't give up on politics but instead demand even better leaders.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, coming out on November 14. It's about a generation of people who've grown up under good government – a historically unprecedented presidency that has passed the laws and made the policies we'll need to save our species and planet from the climate emergency:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

The action opens after the pendulum has swung back, with a new far-right presidency and an insurgency led by white nationalist militias and their offshore backers – seagoing anarcho-capitalist billionaires.

In the book, these forces figure out how to turn good regulations against the people they were meant to help. They file hundreds of simultaneous environmental challenges to refugee housing projects across the country, blocking the infill building that is providing homes for the people whose homes have been burned up in wildfires, washed away in floods, or rendered uninhabitable by drought.

I don't want to spoil the book here, but it shows how the protagonists pursue a multipronged defense, mixing direct action, civil disobedience, mass protest, court challenges and political pressure to fight back. What they don't do is give up on state capacity. When the state is corrupted by wreckers, they claw back control, rather than giving up on the idea of a competent and benevolent public system.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

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dulcewrites · 11 months

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omg that failed successfully kidnapping of myrah fic would be so funny to read 😭 myrahs failure of being a good captive vs aemond being a manic psycho husband would be great omg PLS if u have time write it!! if not just a crumb ,, mayhaps a speck

I imagine this taking place around Baelor’s second maybe third name day. A hunt happens sort of similar to ep 3 of hotd. There are couple of ways I imagine her being taken but this is one. This is little sections: How she gets taken, Aemond’s response, her annoying the shit out of them/them being incompetent lmao

Eyes Peeled

In way, this could techincally be Myrah’s fault.

Amal tells the story to this day. Myrah was ‘a runner’. As a young girl, if she saw something she liked or was bored of her situation, she simply left. It scared her parents to no end, but it was something they were sure she would grow out of the older she got.

The more aware of her surroundings… well the more she should’ve became more aware of them.

Otto advised them not to do the hunt. Claiming it would be a bad time to not only be out in the woods, but also showing the wealth of House Targaryen in the process. But Jeyne Arryn, despite making her support of Rhaenyra’s claim clear at the Great Council, was to attend. A show of support for another child of the Vale of Arryn being born.

Aemond had scoffed at the letter. Muttering something about Baelor being used for politicking.

Myrah was just surprised by the seemingly warm welcome knowing how the last two marriages that connected House Targaryen and Vale went. And with the fanfaire that came with being a Targaryen, it was important to her that pieces of how she grew up was also instilled in their children.

They will be of the mountains and lakes as much as they will be hot blooded, dragon riders.

She had felt sick all morning. It was only compounded by how claustrophobic she felt. Despite the sprawling tented area where they set up, the amount of people around made Myrah unusually antsy. Like she wanted to bolt at the drop of a hat.

Baelor squirmed in her arms, grabbing her cheeks between his little hands. Big eyes staring at her in amusement. Myrah can’t believe she gave birth to something so perfect.

….Then he proceeds to try and grab sapphire hairnet intertwined with her coils.

“Alright, let not do that to mama,” she whispers before putting on a shocked face. “Why don’t we go pull your father’s hair. Yes, let’s do that.”

Aemond was over by Otto and a few other members of Aegon’s council. With Baelor on her hip, Myrah puts a gently brushes against Aemond. Relief flooding his face at the thought of being excused from what she assumes was a boring conversation.

“Your son needs something to play with,” she hands Baelor over with a smile. His tiny hands instantly going to play with the ends of Aemond’s hair.

“I think his cousin has their toys.”

Myrah used the free hands as excuse to leave the tent. “I think there is wine outside.”

She will take in the sights since it is clear Aemond has no interest in it. Staying in the tent content to be around others he knows.

The spectacle that follows the family is something she must get used to.

It did not take long for Myrah to find what she was looking for. A spread of food and wine near the woodsy area where the hunt will take place. People watching was an activity she always loved. With new fresh air, she was able to breath and take in the array of people in the distance.

Before she can put the goblet to her lips, a voice startles her.

She notices flaming red hair and a beard to match before she even hears his voice.

“Quite the showing,” his voice is gruff.

She just nods, that same weird feeling she had all day seeping in. It is not she can explain but before her feet can carry away away to safety, everything goes black

It takes little time before Baelor begins to fuss again. The whining turns into whimpering which turns into full blown crying. A cry for his mother, Aemond is sure. Baelor always became restless if his mother is not in eyesight.

Aemond understood on two different levels. Alicent often regales stories of how connected the two them were when he was a boy.

He too becomes fussy when Myrah is not around.

“She has two big babies to look after,” Aegon muttered one day.

So, when Myrah does not come back from getting the wine she wants. Aemond’s face begins to match his son’s. Distress written all over it.

He sends one of the guards in the tent out to find her. But the gaurd come back a bit pale, and instead of going to Aemond, he beelines to Otto. His grandsire’s back stiffens a bit before going over to Aegon, who sat in a festive, elevated throne. Cup in hand, and crown cocked to the side. The jovialness wiped from his face and replaced with confusion when his hand begins to whisper in his ear.

By this time, Baelor’s face is hot as he buried it in father’s neck. Aegon walks over fake smile on his face.

“Why don’t you give him to one of the nurses,” Aegon suggestion lowly.

Aemond only holds Baelor tighter. “Why? What’s going on?”

Aegon cringes, before motioning towards the guards behind Aemond to leave the tent. “Umm well,” he twists his rings on his fingers nervously before whispering. “I just think he should not be in your arms when I tell you this.”

“Aegon, what the fuck is going on?”

Aegon swallows. “Myrah has seem to be… misplaced.”

Misplaced. As if his dear wife is a hairbrush or a sock.

He gently sets Baelor on the ground. Blinking because he must have misheard that. “What?”

“I’m sure she’s just… around the woods. We will find her,” Aegon reassures. But Aemond feels the blood rushing from his head to his feet. The nurse Aegon called comes over to get Baelor from holding his dad’s legs.

“I - I need Vhagar,” he stutters out.

“No, I don’t think we need to disturb her, do we?”

Aegon knows how this will go. Aemond gets worked up, and Vhagar will follow suit. And before they all know it the forest around them will surely be burned to the ground. Gods forbid, any other place. A hand comes to Aegon’s throat. Criston, who was right behind Aegon, hands itch to grab his sword.

Aegon waves him off when Aemond’s squeezes a bit. They’ve always been ones to take their aggression out on each other; brotherly love and all of that.

“My wife is missing, and you’re tell me no?”

Well, when he puts it like that, and air stops flowing to his brain, who is Aegon to refuse.

The sack is pulled from Myrah’s head, and her eyes squint as they readjust to the setting sun’s light.

She doesn’t recognize her surroundings, she barely did at the hunt inself. All she sees in the cave she in and body of water in front of her. She tries to move but realizes her wrist and ankles are bound.

“You were supposed try and grab the Queen Mother you imbecile. Or the Hand.”

She cranes her neck to see two figures standing by the trees. Myrah had not noticed how cartoonishly tall the red head was till he was being berated by a tiny blonde man.

“What value is she?”

Well then.

So, Myrah wasn’t the queen at one point, and she doesn’t advise the king. She’s still married to a prince and gave birth to another one. That counts for something. She would make an excellent captive.

“And gods forbid that psycho husband of hers comes looking.”

“Hey!”

As soon as she says it, she cringes. Both men snap their heads towards her. They both come over to leer over her.

“Shut it girl.”

“Make me,” she shoots back. Aemond would tell her not to push her luck. That being belligerent will not help.

“Gag her, Percy,” the short blonde looks up at his accomplice. The redhead pats his breeches, then gives a sheepish look.

“I don’t have it on me.”

Leave to Myrah to be taken by the dumbest men in the Seven Kingdoms.

“Look, if you guys let me go now, I’ll make sure nothing happens to you,” she nods. “No harm will be done to you, if no harm is done to me.”

The blonde lets out a squeak of a laugh. “You don’t make the rules here.”

Myrah shrugs. “Fine then, I will just wait for my psycho husband to come on dragon-back while you two figure out what the plan is.”

Percy and the other one share a concerned look.

“Galahad, do you think he will actually come with a dragon,” Percy, despite his height, seems to cower at the thought. Both of them eye Myrah to see if she’s bluffing.

“We have his wife, you fool,” Percy hisses. “What do you think?”

Percy storms off, hands on his hips, looking out at the lake to think.

“You shouldn’t let him speak to you like that,” Myrah fakes concern. Percy mouth down turns in a frown. “I imagine he won’t be too happy if things go side ways. And you will be to blame.” He gives Myrah a sad look before scurrying away to speak with the clear brains of the operation. Though considering the empty, open area they are at, that is not saying much in Myrah’s head.

Aemond is not crazy, never that. But one thing Myrah knows is that Aemond is diligent, almost paranoid, in the way he handles his family. With her, Baelor, his sibling, or mother.

He will be no different now.

#me realizing that aemyrah outsold the vale-targaryen connection #truly love that from them #the incompetence of the kidnappers with Myrah’s quick wits and abrasive personality 😭#this seems far fetched but also funny???#the twins are probably made this night omg….#sorry this is late (if you’re on the time zone I am lol)#I have a scenario where she gets taken through the tunnels. maybe I’ll write that after part 6 is up #love me some modern aemyrah but I want to write some in universe stuff too #fcc asks

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