for the man who sold the world

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

.

Zoro has woken up restless.

Though not frequent in the least, days like these happen. Zoro packs up the ol' ship and heads for one of the islands, wandering the forests and caves and picking fights with overgrown snakes and, once, with a wild boar the size of Luffy's appetite.

He'll rest amongst the wildflowers, stare off into the horizon, where the sky and the sea meet. And then, it'll take him some time to get there, but he'll return to the nearest town and wander the streets.

That's where he is now, the gravel paths hard on the soles of his worn-down boots as he walks. The outdoor market is bustling and Zoro tunes out the cacophony of conversation, of men and women and children yelling out deals on their wares. It's getting close to dinner time, he thinks if the crowd is anything to go by.

Zoro sighs, thinking he should head back soon.

He tucks a hand in the opened front of his robe, elbow resting on the tsuka of his swords. He is the epitome of nonchalance as he walks, eyeing trinkets like a magpie and pausing when a few pipes grab his attention.

He never buys one; the reciprocant of such a gift prefers pre-rolls. Zoro sighs again, pausing in front of a florist, staring at the bouquets. He doesn't know much about flowers, but he's been called out in the past for his incapability in knowing anything about the concept of romantic gestures by bringing any home.

"What catches your eye?" the young man asks, a mischievous glint in his green eyes.

Zoro presses his lips as he looks harder, as if the flowers will answer for him. There are bouquets already made and buckets and vases holding different kinds of flowers for the ambitious buyer that wishes to build their own.

"Surprise me," he finally mutters.

The young man's smile grows. Zoro thinks it helps to be well known on the islands of the All Blue. He watches the young man grab specific flowers, building the bouquet from scratch. He adds some greenery: ferns and eucalyptus evenly distributed around the red, white and pale pink flowers.

"There you go," he says with a laugh and Zoro tries to be careful as he takes the bouquet, brown wrapping paper crinkling in his clumsy grip.

There are red tulips, white roses and pale pink peonies. Zoro knows there's meaning behind the carefully selected flowers. He knows that Sanji will know what it is.

Zoro looks at the young man, an eyebrow raised.

"I'd never steer you wrong, Mr. Roronoa," he says with another laugh. "He'll love these."

Both of these resistance groups are a response to Israel's violent occupation and invasions in the region. Hezbollah emerged in 1982 after Israel invaded Lebanon. Hamas was created after the first Intifada in 87.

The fact that the trafficking of enslaved Africans underpins so much of western European culture is so severely underacknowledged by white western Europeans that it boggles the mind to think of it. I've posted here before about how pitiful have been the attempts of white institutions to account for the crimes of their past, how they will at best acknowledge only the most blatant and undeniable parts of their history while laundering responsibility for the great majority of it. One particularly striking aspect of that is how little museum space in western Europe is dedicated to discussing slavery.

The British Museum in London was formed from the private collection of Hans Sloane whose collection was funded by profits from Caribbean plantations inherited by his wife. The original museum building was bought by the British government from the children of John Montagu, a man who was literally granted ownership of the Caribbean islands of St Lucia and St Vincent by the British state. The current museum building was constructed starting in the 1820s (when slavery was still legal in the British Empire) funded directly by the British government, around 20% of whose tax income at that time came in the form of customs on imported products, such as sugar and cotton from the Caribbean.

Yet the extent of the museum's engagement with its total historic dependence on slavery is merely to have moved a bust of Hans Sloane's head to a new location with some comments on his slavery connection. There is an ongoing campaign to have merely one permanent exhibit about the slave trade at the musem. (And this is not even getting into the famous legacy of that museum as a repository of looted colonial plunder such as the Benin bronzes.)

It's not just big museums either. A tiny museum like Jane Austen's house in Chawton, UK, has a notice on its website regarding mentions of slavery that actually reassures guests that they won't go too far in doing so, "We would like to offer reassurance that we will not, and have never had any intention to, interrogate Jane Austen, her characters or her readers for drinking tea." An admission that's rather telling about what they expect the views of museum visitors to be. But why not interrogate her or her characters? That is exactly what they should be doing!

It is quite well-known among Austen fans than Mansfield Park is her book that deals with slavery: the protagonist lives in the house of a man who owns slave plantations in Antigua. Many fans are keen to find evidence in the text that the protagonist objects to this, but she ultimately marries the son of the plantation owner and lives on the land of the plantation owner and her husband's income is paid by the plantation owner, so her objections (if they exist) cannot be worth much.

In Persuasion, the protagonist's love interest is a naval officer who fought in the Battle of Santo Domingo, a battle that was explicitly about protecting British interests in the Caribbean (i.e. sugar plantations) from being captured by the French.

In Pride and Prejudice, Mr Bingley has no land and his huge income is derived from investment in government bonds, which is to say that he pays for British military campaigns (such as the same Battle of Santo Domingo) and in return he is paid by the British government out of tax income, of which a big chunk is customs levied on slave-produced products.

And that's without even getting into the question of where the cotton comes from that makes up the dresses which are a frequent subject of discussion for many Austen characters.

For that matter, what about the dresses worn by Austen herself when writing her novels? The sugar in the tea she drank? The very house she lived in was owned by her brother, who inherited it (and all his considerable wealth) from Thomas Knight, a Tory MP (which is to say, a politican from the British political wing which most heavily supported slavery). The world of Austen's novels is entirely about slavery, it is the very thing which makes the lifestyles of the characters possible. The whole museum is about slavery whether the curators like it or not, anything less than mentioning it constantly is a deliberate hiding of the truth. And when I visited it a couple of years ago, I do not recall seeing slavery mentioned even once (maybe I missed one sign in a corner of one room or something idk).

As well as the severe underreporting of slavery at museums, the lack of slavery-specific museums in western Europe is also really remarkable. The Mercado de Escravos in Lagos, Portgual and the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, UK, are the only two that I am aware of, albeit the latter is closed until 2029. A slavery museum in Amsterdam has been proposed and is supposed to open in 2030, but given that a French slavery museum was proposed by Francois Hollande a decade ago and never built I will not get my hopes too high about it.

The London Museum Docklands has a permanent exhibit on London's connection to slavery, which is pretty good as far as it goes, but is utterly pathetic in the context that it is the only permanent exhibit about the slave trade in the whole city. The best I have seen by far is the Suriname Museum in Amsterdam, which dedicates a huge portion of its space to covering the slave trade in great detail. The fact that the museum was founded by the descendants of enslaved Africans who were trafficked to Suriname is surely why this particular museum is so good.

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.

I had an event that I was worried about, where I might have to talk about something that I was struggling to mask my autism about

And I was telling a friend, and she scoffed, saying "just don't be aggy"

And then I admitted what my non-masked response would be

And she was like "oh shit, yeah, that's super aggy"

And I know that

I know that I come across as a bitch when I don't mask

And I've recovered enough that I think I can mask appropriately, but whether or not I stepped back was a reasonable response in this instance

a friend, and she scoffed, saying

"just don’t be aggy”