I've done my waiting, 15 years of it

that's right

Inside of a Zeiss Ikon shutter

Now, I'm going to give you a number, and I'm going to ask that you send in a photo of your target alongside any additional information you may have- family members, security, combat training, medical conditions, just anything you can think of that might be helpful.

Wonderful, you are all good. All we need now is a piece of government-issued ID, for insurance purposes, and a location for payment pickup. We accept cash, gold, processed uranium, and etransfer.

I'm sorry, we don't take american express.

Good, okay, so it looks like we are all set- when the job is complete, you will be notified VIA discreet codeword that a stranger will whisper to you on a crowded street.

We do not issue receipts, but if you'd like, I can arrange for a specific breed of tropical flower to be sent to your home address. Our associates will be able to validate it should the need arises.

"I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid the Pope is a high-status target that is beyond our area of service.

Yes, I- no, I'm sorry, I'm not able to do that for you.

Okay. Okay. Yes, I understand.

Sir, if you're going to use that sort of language, you should know that our HR department does operate in a hands-on capacity.

Are you having fun? Do you want to keep scrolling or are you just on autopilot?

Have you eaten today?

Have you consumed water today?

Do you need to go to the bathroom?

Have you slept recently?

Do you have any chores in process that you've forgotten about or are putting off? (Laundry that needs taken out of the machine, a dishwasher full of dishes that need put away, etc.)

Have you taken all your meds?

If the answer is "All good," feel free to keep scrolling!

Hit the “thumbs down.” It’s like, what’s wrong??? Was our summary wrong? Were there offensive words? Thank you for helping us improve our AI tools :)

I selected “other.”

Text box popped up. Please elaborate!

Wrote in “I can fucking read” submit comment

Then had to spend several minutes torching all my settings with a flamethrower. Let me be clear: I’m (a lawyer) notoriously picky with my words FOR GOOD REASON (lawyering) so I overwhelmingly reject Gmail’s “helpful” little assistance. My privacy settings were set to “full paranoia” a little less than a year ago when I saw the writing on the wall and knew public defenders could become a target in the future. Better to lock it all down now.

Gemini had crept in there and turned ALL that shit back on. And showed itself by saying “Jane Doe says she’s so sorry for your loss and offers to reschedule for Thursday at 3” over an email from Jane Doe saying “I’m so sorry for your loss. We could reschedule for Thursday at 3?”

Why would I possibly need this. In what universe would I need this. I have eyes and a brain and a reading speed that twenty years ago was measured at 1500 wpm with full comprehension on dense scientific text. Furthermore! If I read a summary, I’m not reading what they actually wrote. If I’m not reading what they actually wrote, I’m not using my own judgment on the words and phrases that they used.

I literally don’t understand why this is helpful at all. This is just avoidance. Using LLMs to write is specifically Not Writing. Using LLMs to summarize is Not Reading. Using them to make art is Avoiding Making Art. Just READ! Just WRITE! I was not put on this fucking planet to not read and not write and not make art! Avoidance is an anxiety symptom and indulging it gives it more power.

If I had an AI to do my most dreaded task, answer the phone for clients, I wouldn’t use it. Because an AI cannot help them. An AI cannot hear the facts of their case, make appropriate noises, be thoughtful and insightful, and then give them a realistic estimate of what could happen in court. I am unique. I cannot be replaced by machine learning. I have style. I have expertise. I don’t hallucinate unless I’m having a really great Friday night and I’m off the clock.

When I need to outsource tasks from my own brain, I give them to people I know can do them and that I trust to do them right.

Natalie Portman and French directors Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall) and Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez) have joined an open letter condemning the cultural boycott of Israeli director Nadav Lapid.

Lapid was set to attend the Marseille International Film Festival in July as part of the jury, but pulled out following pressure from pro-Palestinian filmmakers, who threatened to withdraw their films from selection if Lapid took part.

The Israeli director is a sharp critic of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and has lived in France since 2021. His last feature, Yes, is a scathing satire on the radicalization of contemporary Israeli society and the complicity of the country’s artistic community in the killings in Gaza and the West Bank. But because the film was partially financed by the Israeli Film Fund, some pro-Palestinian activists have accused Lapid of complicity with the Israeli government and called for a boycott of him and his work.

On Monday, more than 350 leading figures in the French film industry, including producers Saïd Ben Saïd (Elle) and Judith Lou Lévy (Dahomey), along with directors Stéphane Demoustier (The Great Arch) and Mati Diop (Atlantics, Dahomey), signed an open letter, published in French newspaper Le Monde calling the cultural boycott of Lapid “an intellectual failure.”

“That Israel’s greatest dissident artist [who] tirelessly denounces the fascist and colonialist tendencies of his government and its criminal moral failings in films that have won awards worldwide, should be forced to withdraw from a French festival should alarm us and mobilize us beyond this absurdity,” the letter reads. “It should alert us to the obvious truth: whatever crimes their state may commit, no one can be reduced to a passport.”

-mass buy in from the SE Asian subcontinent to the British Isles. I’m talking government, populace, infrastructure, the whole nine yards. Every government from Bangladesh to Morocco to Scotland will have to issue immigration papers, determine sources of income, and set up social safety nets. Etc etc etc.

That in turn will require:

-populations the world over to commit themselves to never creating an environment so hostile to Jews that Jews come to feel that a nation state in the Southern Levant is the only option.

Now let’s go full idealistic. Let’s say that the world decides to free Palestine and send the Jews “home.” Let’s say all the people and governments are committed to making that happen humanely and equitably. What would that look like?

-trillions of dollars in reparations for murder, property theft, bank accounts, businesses, etc compounded over minimum 80 years

-full buy in from all levels of society to educating themselves about anti-Semitism, and eradicating it. I’m talking from executive branch to the working poor.

If you want Palestine to be free from the river to the sea, you really need to sit down and actually think about where you will send those Israeli Jews and descendants who only ended up there in the first place after they were violently expelled from somewhere else. I’m not talking about the Yishuv. I’m talking about the world after 1945. Are they supposed to go back to Poland? Or Yemen? Or France? Or Syria? What would that look like? Genuinely, how do we administrate and create the infrastructure for that?

It’s a hard, shitty question which flies in the face of blind optimism and overly simple narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. But from where I’m sitting as a non-Zionist (I don’t do nationalism point blank; this is not a value judgement or a smug assertion of diasporic Jewish moral superiority) Holocaust scholar, it seems like those Jews are supposed to disappear or like, painlessly immigrate somewhere?

This is another iteration of The Jewish Problem, and if we’re going to seriously say that Israel should cease to exist and be replaced by a Palestinian nation state, we have to answer these questions.

Because in the current global climate? The “solution” to the “Jewish Problem” in the Southern Levant looks like mass murder. And that’s half the Jews in the world right there.

That bothers me. Does it bother you? Or is it the price you’re willing to pay? You don’t have to answer that. Deep in your heart you already know exactly what your answer is.

“What?” Parker looked back over her shoulder at the man currently adorned with three blondes, five brunettes, and a redhead. “Why?”

“Something’s not right,” Eliot said, which wasn’t an explanation at all.

“Think you can maybe give us a little more to go on than that?” Nate asked, the kind of sardonic authority that was easy to pull off when he wasn’t even in the building.

“No,” Eliot snapped. “I don’t know what the hell it is, I just know it’s bad news.” MI6 in the way he held his champagne and CIA in the way he stood and a soldier in his shoulders and Interpol in the way he looked around the room – no, CIA again – no, FBI – League of Assassins? Obviously not that, couldn’t have been that, so what exactly was it that had him wanting to grab Parker and get the hell out? If he could get closer he might be able to tell, the mezzanine might as well have been a different building entirely for all the good it did him. All forest, no trees.

“Not distinctive enough?” Hardison asked, but it wasn’t a real question.

“Too distinctive,” Eliot answered, even though he knew Hardison didn’t actually care. “I’ve just never seen it before.”

“If you’ll pardon the intrusion, sir,” said a voice not in Eliot’s ear, and he did not make it obvious how he stiffened at the address. Eliot turned, let harmless confusion and interest soften his face.

The butler, the one he’d seen before. Pennyworth. That familiar combination of MI6 and Interpol, muddied with domestic service but present all the same.

“May I have your name?” the butler asked, his hair was white but his eyes were sharp.

“Isaac Easton,” Eliot lied automatically. “Is something wrong?”

Mr. Pennyworth exuded serene amusement. “So sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid you’re not Mr. Easton.”

“Don’t try to deny it,” Sophie said in Eliot’s ear before he could respond. “He couldn’t make it so he told you to come.”

“You caught me,” Eliot said, sheepish. “Turned out he had some kind of a family thing, said I could use his invite. Didn’t think anyone’d notice if I used his name. He’ll be flattered you remember him.”

It was unclear if Pennyworth bought this story, as placid as before. “I don’t, actually,” he said. “But I’ve always made it a point to examine the guest lists personally. If there were meant to be a former green beret in attendance, I would know about it.”

Eliot was, for the most fleeting of moments, stunned.

The butler smiled. It was not kind. “The way you watch the crowd,” he explained. “It’s very distinctive.”

Eliot froze. He frowned. His brow furrowed.

which is to say. leverage crew are unknowingly speedrunning this guy’s demise. bruce was already handling it, he’s just content to play a longer game cuz taking down evil rich guys who do run-of-the-mill rich people crimes and not, y'know, increasingly elaborate supervillain crimes often involving fun new dangerous chemicals and explosives is the batman equivalent of a hobby. he combs thru the banking records of gotham’s elite to relax

and. because in both the leverage crew and the batfam’s experience people who have a very particular skillset and are lying about it do not mean well, they spend the whole gala convinced the other group are Villains.

so the longer the job takes the more nate suggests maybe they just bail, guys, they can find another angle that doesn’t need those files, they have definitely stumbled into something bigger here and he has no idea who bruce wayne actually is but he does not want to piss him off, while parker and eliot stubbornly refuse to leave because, no, they are figuring out what the fuck wayne’s deal is. hardison is having too much fun talking to tim to take a side. sophie can’t decide if the inevitability of someone being stabbed is worth finding out why dick grayson is subtly grilling her about a few very specific pieces of artwork and their exact locations

(for the record dick is mostly trying to figure out if she knows selina) (he is asking the wrong person) (parker hasn’t ever talked to her but they’ve crossed paths) (only so many buildings containing incredibly expensive things in the world. yknow how it is)

and the more of the evening that passes the more bruce starts to develop a twitch, because these people are here for A Reason but no one can find anything on them, they’re not trying to get in the kitchens, they’re not armed, he sent tim off to hack into their comms two hours ago and he still hasn’t come back, dick is convinced the older woman is a prolific griffer but bruce is reasonably sure she’s related to him somehow, what are they trying to do why are they here bruce’s head hurts

eventually, eliot hits his subterfuge limit and just starts for the office, and bruce follows him, and they get in the aforementioned brawl in a relatively out-the-way hallway that slowly attracts parker, sophie, nate, and dick, and as that is playing out hardison finally says something he thinks isn’t incriminating but makes tim go “ohhh you’re after the medical fraud guy. shit, why didn’t you just say so? i’ll send you the files now”

meaning hardison finally gives his full attention back to the main comms channel and says “uh, nate? it’s cool, i sorted it, you can bounce”, only for nate to reply “eliot has bruce wayne in a chokehold” and then, as hardison splutters, “no, wait, bruce wayne has eliot pinned– no, eliot has– no, i think– wait, maybe–”

“you, uh. you can break it up” hardison says, desperately trying to find a security camera with a good angle, and tim pipes up “hey, can we set up your guy and bruce on some playdates?” as nate, caught between bemusement and concern, says “i think? this is fun for them?”