#Tech Blog 2023

[webtechnicalguru]

Hindi Blog | Tech Blog 2023 | Webtechnicalguru

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[thisischeri]

instagram: cheri.png

[futureitboy]

Tech in fashion

[mostlysignssomeportents]

MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing

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/2025/02/05/power-of-positive-thinking/#the-socialism-of-fools

In her unmissable 2023 book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein paints a picture of a "mirror world" of right wing and conspiratorial beliefs that are warped, false reflections of real crises:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

For example, Qanon's obsession with "child trafficking" is a mirror-world version of the real crises of child poverty, child labor, border family separations and kids in cages. Anti-vax is the mirror-world version of the true story of the Sacklers and their fellow opioid barons making billions on Oxy and fent, with the collusion of corrupt FDA officials and a pliant bankruptcy court system. Xenophobic panic about "immigrants stealing jobs" is the mirror world version of the well-documented fact that big business shipped jobs to low-waged territories abroad, weakening US labor and smashing US unions. Cryptocurrency talk about "decentralization" is the mirror-world version of the decay of every industry (including tech) into a monopoly or a cartel.

Klein is at pains to point out that other political thinkers have described this phenomenon. Back in the 19th century, leftists called antisemitism "the socialism of fools." Socialism – the idea that working people are preyed upon by capital – is reflected in the warped mirror as "working people are preyed upon by international Jewish bankers."

The mirror world is a critical concept, because it shows that far right and conspiratorial beliefs are often uneasy neighbors with real, serious political movements. The swivel-eyed loons have a point, in other words:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

Once you understand the mirror world, you start to realize that many right wing conspiracists could have been directed into productive movements, if only they'd understood that their problems were with systems, not sinister individuals (this is why Trump has ordered a purge of any federally funded research that contains the word "systemic"):

https://mamot.fr/@Lazarou@mastodon.social/113943287435897828

This also explains why the "tropes" of right wing conspiratorialism sometimes echo left wing, radical thought. I once had a (genuinely unhinged) dialog with a self-described German "progressive" who told me that criticizing the finance industry as parasitic on the real economy was "structurally antisemitic." Nonsense like this is why Klein's "mirror world" is so important: unless you understand the mirror world, you can end up believing that "progressive" just means "defending anything the right hates."

Historian Erik Baker is the author of a new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, which has some very interesting things to say about the mirror world:

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674293601

In a recent edition of the always-excellent Know Your Enemy podcast, the hosts interviewed Baker about the book, and the conversation turned to the subject of pyramid schemes, the "multilevel marketing systems" that are woven into so many religious, right-wing movements:

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-the-entrepreneurial-ethic/

MLMs have it all: prosperity gospel ("God rewards virtue with wealth"), atomization ("you are an entrepreneur and everyone in your life is your potential customer"), and rabid anti-Communism ("solidarity is a trick to make you poorer").

The rise of the far right can't be separated from the history of MLMs. The modern MLM starts with Amway, a cultlike national scam that was founded by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos (father-in-law of Betsy DeVos).

Rank-and-file members of the Amway cult lived in dire poverty, convinced that their financial predicament was their own fault for not faithfully following the "sure-fire" Amway method for building a business. Andrea Pitzer's gripping memoir of growing up in an Amway household offers a glimpse of the human cost of the cult:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/amway-america/681479/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZxYkntna5M_rYEv4707Zqqs

Amway – and MLMs like it – don't just bleed out their members by convincing them to buy mountains of useless crap they're supposed to sell to their families, while enriching the people at the top of the pyramid who sell it to them. The "toxic positivity" of multi-level marketing cults forces members deep into debt to pay for seminars and retreats where they are supposed to learn how to repair the personal defects that keep them from being "successful entrepreneurs." The topline of the cult isn't just getting rich selling stuff – they're making bank by selling false hope, literally, in Hilton ballrooms and convention centers across the country, where hearing an MLM scammer berate you for being a "bad entrepreneur" costs thousands of dollars.

Amway destroyed so many lives that Richard Nixon's FTC decided to investigate it. The investigation wasn't going well for Amway, which was facing an existential crisis that they were rescued from by Nixon's resignation. You see, Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, was the former Congressman of Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel, who was also the head of the US Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful business lobbyist in America.

At Ford's direction, the FTC exonerated Amway of all wrongdoing. But it's even worse than that: Ford's FTC actually crafted a rule that differentiated legal pyramid schemes from illegal ones, based on Amway's destructive business practices. Under this new rule, any pyramid scheme that had the same structure as Amway was presumptively legal. Every MLM operating in America today is built on the Amway model, taking advantage of the FTC's Amway rule to operate in the open, without fear of legal repercussions.

MLMs prey on the poor and desperate: women, people of color, people in dying small towns and decaying rustbelt cities. It's not just that these people are desperate – it's that they only survive through networks of mutual aid. Poor women rely on other poor women to help with child care, marginalized people rely on one another for help with home maintenance, small loans, a place to crash after an eviction, or a place to park the RV you're living out of.

In other words, people who lack monetary capital must rely on social capital for survival. That's why MLMs target these people: an MLM is a system for destructively transforming social capital into monetary capital. MLMs exhort their members to mine their social relationships for "leads" and "customers" and to use the language of social solidarity ("women helping women") to wheedle, guilt, and arm-twist people from your mutual aid network into buying things they don't need and can't afford.

But it's worse, because what MLMs really sell is MLMs. The real purpose of an MLM sales call is to convince the "customer" to become an MLM salesperson, who owes you a share of every sale they make and is incentivized to buy stock they don't need (from you) in order to make quotas. And of course, their real job is to sign up other salespeople to work under them, and so on.

An MLM isn't just a pathogen, in other words – it's a contagion. When someone in your social support network gets the MLM disease, they don't just burn all their social ties with you and the people you rely on – they convince more people in your social group to do the same.

Which brings me back to the mirror world, and Erik Baker's conversation with the Know Your Enemy podcast. Baker starts to talk about who gets big into Amway: "people who already effectively lead by the force of their charisma and personality many other people in their lives. Right? Because you're able to sell to those people, and you're able to recruit those people. What are we talking about? Well, they're effectively recruiting organizers, people who have a natural capacity for organizing and then sending them out in the world to organize on behalf of Christian capitalism."

Listening to this, I was thunderstruck: MLM recruiters are the mirror world version of union organizers. In her memoir of growing up in Amway, Andrea Pitzer talks about how her mom would approach strangers and try to lead them through a kind of structured discussion:

Everywhere we went—the mall, state parks, grocery stores—she’d ask people whether they could use a little more money each month. “I’d love to set up a time to talk to you about an exciting business opportunity.” The words should have seemed suspect. Yet people almost always gave her their number. Her confidence and professionalism were reassuring, and her enthusiasm was electric, even, at first, to me. “What would you do with $1 million?” she’d ask, spinning me around the kitchen.

This kind of person, having this kind of dialog, is exactly how union organizers work. In A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey's classic book on labor organizing, she describes how she would seek out the charismatic, outgoing workers in a job-site, the natural leaders, and recruit them to help bring the other workers onboard:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Organizer training focuses on how to have a "structured organizing conversation," which McAlevey described in a 2019 Jacobin article:

“If you had a magic wand and could change three things about life in America [or her town or city or school], what would you change?” The rest of your conversation needs to be anchored to her answers to that question.

https://jacobin.com/2019/11/thanksgiving-organizing-activism-friends-family-conversation-presidential-election

The MLM conversation and the union conversation have eerily similar structures, but the former is designed to commodify and destroy solidarity, and the latter is designed to reinforce and mobilize solidarity. Seen in this light, an MLM is a mirror world union, one that converts solidarity into misery and powerlessness instead of joy and strength.

The MLM movement doesn't just make men like Rich De Vos and Jay Van Andel into billionaires. MLM bosses are heavy funders of the right, a blank check for the Heritage Foundation. Trump is the MLM president, a grifter who grew up on the gospel of Norman Vincent Peale – a key figure in MLM cult dynamics – who tells his followers that wealth is a sign of virtue. Trump boasts about all the people he's ripped off, boasting about how getting away with cheating "makes me smart":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

The corollary is that being cheated means you're stupid. Caveat emptor, the motto of the cryptocurrency industry ("not your wallet, not your coins") that spent hundreds of millions to get Trump elected.

Tech has its own mirror world. The people who used tech to find fellow weirdos and make delightful and wonderful things are mirrored by the people who used tech to find fellow weirdos and call for fascism, ethnic cleansing, and concentration camps.

In Picks and Shovels, my next novel (Feb 17), I introduce readers to a fictitious 1980s religious computer sales cult called Fidelity Computing, run by an orthodox rabbi, a Catholic priest and a Mormon rabbi:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

Fidelity is a faith scam, a pyramid scheme that is parasitic upon the bonds of faith and fellowship. Martin Hench, the hero of the story – a hard-fighting high tech forensic accountant – goes to work for a competing business, Computing Freedom, run by three Fidelity ex-employees who have left their faiths and their employers to pursue a vision of computers that is about liberation, rather than control.

The women of Computing Freedom – a queer orthodox woman who's been kicked out of her family, a Mormon woman who's renounced the LDS over its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, and a nun who's left her order to throw in with the Liberation Theology movement – are all charismatic, energetic, inspirational organizers.

Because of course they are – that's why they were so good at selling computers for the Reverend Sirs who sit at the top of Fidelity Computing's pyramid scheme.

Hearing Baker's interview and reading Pitzer's memoir last week made it all click together for me. Not just that MLMs destroy social bonds, but that within every person who gets sucked into an MLM, there's a community organizer who could be building the bonds that MLMs destroy.

[lindamarcis-blog]

Tech Odyssey 2023: Navigating the Seas of Innovation

Charting a Course Through the Technological Frontier:      Provide an engaging introduction that highlights the rapid pace of technological advancements. Mention the importance of staying updated with emerging technologies in today’s world. Section 1: AI and Machine Learning Revolution: Discuss recent developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Highlight real-world…

[mariacallous]

The Trump administration’s Federal Trade Commission has removed four years’ worth of business guidance blogs as of Tuesday morning, including important consumer protection information related to artificial intelligence and the agency’s landmark privacy lawsuits under former chair Lina Khan against companies like Amazon and Microsoft. More than 300 blogs were removed.

On the FTC’s website, the page hosting all of the agency’s business-related blogs and guidance no longer includes any information published during former president Joe Biden’s administration, current and former FTC employees, who spoke under anonymity for fear of retaliation, tell WIRED. These blogs contained advice from the FTC on how big tech companies could avoid violating consumer protection laws.

One now deleted blog, titled “Hey, Alexa! What are you doing with my data?” explains how, according to two FTC complaints, Amazon and its Ring security camera products allegedly leveraged sensitive consumer data to train the ecommerce giant’s algorithms. (Amazon disagreed with the FTC’s claims.) It also provided guidance for companies operating similar products and services. Another post titled “$20 million FTC settlement addresses Microsoft Xbox illegal collection of kids’ data: A game changer for COPPA compliance” instructs tech companies on how to abide by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by using the 2023 Microsoft settlement as an example. The settlement followed allegations by the FTC that Microsoft obtained data from children using Xbox systems without the consent of their parents or guardians.

“In terms of the message to industry on what our compliance expectations were, which is in some ways the most important part of enforcement action, they are trying to just erase those from history,” a source familiar tells WIRED.

Another removed FTC blog titled “The Luring Test: AI and the engineering of consumer trust” outlines how businesses could avoid creating chatbots that violate the FTC Act’s rules against unfair or deceptive products. This blog won an award in 2023 for “excellent descriptions of artificial intelligence.”

The Trump administration has received broad support from the tech industry. Big tech companies like Amazon and Meta, as well as tech entrepreneurs like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, all donated to Trump’s inauguration fund. Other Silicon Valley leaders, like Elon Musk and David Sacks, are officially advising the administration. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employs technologists sourced from Musk’s tech companies. And already, federal agencies like the General Services Administration have started to roll out AI products like GSAi, a general-purpose government chatbot.

The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED.

Removing blogs raises serious compliance concerns under the Federal Records Act and the Open Government Data Act, one former FTC official tells WIRED. During the Biden administration, FTC leadership would place “warning” labels above previous administrations’ public decisions it no longer agreed with, the source said, fearing that removal would violate the law.

Since President Donald Trump designated Andrew Ferguson to replace Khan as FTC chair in January, the Republican regulator has vowed to leverage his authority to go after big tech companies. Unlike Khan, however, Ferguson’s criticisms center around the Republican party’s long-standing allegations that social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, censor conservative speech online. Before being selected as chair, Ferguson told Trump that his vision for the agency also included rolling back Biden-era regulations on artificial intelligence and tougher merger standards, The New York Times reported in December.

In an interview with CNBC last week, Ferguson argued that content moderation could equate to an antitrust violation. “If companies are degrading their product quality by kicking people off because they hold particular views, that could be an indication that there's a competition problem,” he said.

Sources speaking with WIRED on Tuesday claimed that tech companies are the only groups who benefit from the removal of these blogs.

“They are talking a big game on censorship. But at the end of the day, the thing that really hits these companies’ bottom line is what data they can collect, how they can use that data, whether they can train their AI models on that data, and if this administration is planning to take the foot off the gas there while stepping up its work on censorship,” the source familiar alleges. “I think that's a change big tech would be very happy with.”

[ailesswhumptober]

Hi. I definitely felt refreshed reading your hard stance and information on ai in your pinned, but irrelevant to that, I only found your blog today and I feel like I missed something with AI and whumptober. Can I learn about that? I hope my language makes sense.

In the late summer of 2023, an anonymous user asked the Whumptober blog if AI-generated content would be allowed for the event. This anon did not come from any of us, nor do we know who originally send this ask, but one of us did see Whumptober's response which kickstarted this entire thing.

Whumptober responded that they would not be disallowing AI because they "do not want to police how other people create things" and "didn't want to exclude anybody" but that they would "discourage" AI-generated content "because it feels like cheating" (all direct quotes).

Myself, the other mods, and several more people, were very disappointed in this stance. several of us started replying to the post and got into a back-and-forth with the Whumptober mods about why AI-generated content is harmful and bad. These posts and replies have since been mostly deleted by the Whumptober blog, nor do we want to rehash the entire thing, but some of the stances that Whumptober took that really rubbed us wrong were (again with direct quotes):

"AI-generated content is not art theft". When pointed out that these sorts of applications very much scrape content without consent, Whumptober claimed that it's the AI that steals then, not the person who uses the AI. They also claimed that since the AI already scraped the content, you "might as well use it", that defending against AI scraping is "going down on an already burning hill" and that "if you don't want your content scraped/stolen, just don't post it online". We found these very concerning statements from an event made by and for creators.

"AI-generated content is a fandom issue and nobody in the real world is harmed by it". This is, obviously, factually incorrect. When we pointed out real creators in many creative industries are being hit hard because of AI-generation, they said "that's capitalism's fault, not AI-generation" (???) and they also told us to "touch grass".

"These sort of AIs are an accessibility tool for the disabled, so disliking them is ableism". Again, this is incorrect. They tried to liken it to predictive text or spell check. We pointed out that there's a vast difference between those machine learning tools and actually generative AI that subsides on scraped content. We said disabled people (many of whom were involved in the back-and-forth) are sick of being used as a strawman by tech bros. They then said "real disabled people probably feel differently" which was a slap in the face, and honestly the thing that still is the most horrible to me about this whole thing.

This is the point where Whumptober started to block a bunch of us and delete asks/replies. They made a post that falsely made it seem like we were harassing and bullying them for saying that they "couldn't check every single entry for AI-generated content". We pointed out multiple times that we absolutely did not expect them to, since we're very aware that with the size of the Whumptober event, it would be impossible. We'd just like them to say 'AI-generated content is not allowed and it's art theft' but apparently they didn't want to.

After this one of the mods DMed me and asked me to send them some resources on why AI-generated content and scraping AI is bad, so they could educate themselves. We spent several minutes collecting sources (some linked in our pinned). They said the Whumptober mods would read them, and then come to a standpoint. But then within less than a minute of us sending the links, they deleted the remaining posts involved in the debate, and just told us they were sticking to their standpoint that "We will not police how people create things, we'll just discourage people by not reblogging it". They also added to their pinned that they won't ever respond to any asks about AI-generated content again. So that was that.

Somewhere during the argument, the Whumptober mods told us that if we disliked their stance so much, we should just make our own event. So we did.

(Edit to add: regardless on if whumptober does change their policy, we never received any sort of acknowledgement or apology of the above and we will keep running this event for whoever wants to.)

(Edit to add 2: as a cherry on the shitcake, we'd like the point out that Whumptober is now very much trying to hunker down and convince people that they never changed their stance and this has been their policy all along, after they quietly changed their FAQ to say that they won't reblog AI-generated content. While it's true that "we won't reblog AI-generated content" has always been part of the policy, 1) that doesn't change the fact that they did say it was allowed back then and 2) that doesn't change that the reason they don't reblog AI-generated content is because they 'feel it's cheating' and 'don't want to cause drama', and not because they're anti-ai. Them reblogging or not reblogging AI-generated content was never the issue.)

[are-we-art-yet]

genuinely a really cool blog to see as a hand-drawn artist. i've been baying for ai artists and traditional artists to coexist as a greater art community since the beginning, and have always personally been of the mindset that i would love to consent and draw data for a model. i admit, i was a hardcore anti-ai guy for much of 2023-2024; pushed that way because of billionaries and alt-right rallying around the topic. the obsession with eradicating art as a job (with no recourse for the unemployed) + the obsession with some sort of revenge fantasy against furry artists on twitter really made me reactive against the tech. however, as the year went on, the reactionary sentiments from the other side (obsessions with 'human soul', social contagions, purity of art, and other such fash nonsense that became indistinguishable from the alt-right side) pushed me towards the middle. dibbling into theory this year certainly helped.

all this to say that the AWAY collective is everything i wanted from the AI debate, and i hope you guys end up leading the charge on how this technology is developed. i'd love to live in a world where ai artists and traditional/hand-drawn artists are friends within the same community, not enemies.

:)

[mynametido]

My Complete High School Transcript

This was for a new reality I created a bit ago that was sort of going to be "revenge", as I put it, before I finally permashift to my desired reality. But now that I'm not feral anymore, I thought it'd be best to not let the reality go completely to waste. A homage if you will. Context: I used to be a gifted child with "so much potential". Therefore, in honor of this deep-seated desire for academic validation here were going to be my unofficial overqualified high school years in a nutshell.

As @hrrtshape said it best, "I'll permashift when it stops feeling like a betrayal," but, in retrospect, shifting here would have felt more like living long enough to see myself become the villain.

[Random Acting Stuff]

>>-----☆------->

Played Jazmine Dubois from Boondocks (2007 - 2016)

Season 4 of Stranger Things is released - (I play Eleven) (2022)

Last of Us Show - (I play Ellie) (2023)

Jurassic World: Dominion - (I play young Charlotte Lockwood) (2023)

Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse is released - (I play Gwen Stacy) (2024)

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is released - (I play Mae) (2024)

(2021) [ Summer Before]

01. Founder of non-profit volunteering organization: with 15,000+ hours of volunteer work before highschool graduation

02. Successful etsy business (I sell crochet/sewing patterns)

03. Started 3 Youtube channels

☆ Food

☆ Comprehensive Input for English Learners

☆ Book Club

| Year 1 (2021 - 2022)

01. Founder of multimedia club (club for people with multiple interests)

02. Co-host of school podcast

03. President of Book Club

04. Monthly Fundraising Livestreams: minimum of $120,000 a year collected in total

05. Gold medal at 2021 Winter Olympics (figure skating) + world record for highest score

06. Successful online vegan meal kit service (Started)

☆ Online cookbook & vegan news blog // political art (Year 1)

☆ Vegan snack box (so people can try new vegan snacks) (Year 1)

+ Vegan meal kit (like BlueApron, HomeChef, etc.) (Year 2)

☆ An barcode scanner app (“is this vegan” type deal) (Year 2)

☆ Getting Plants Subsidized (Year 3)

☆ Vegan grocery stores (Year 4)

☆ Vegan Vending machine (Year 4)

07. Started and am the head of Youtube channel for my highschool

| Year 2 (2022 - 2023)

01. CPR & First Aid Certification

02. Ham Radio License

03. FEMA (crisis management) Cert

04.Proficient in ASL

05. Screenwriting club

06. Editor of school paper

07. Won New York Marathon

08. Co-chair of the vegan extension of the “meals on wheels” organization (I organize everything; the dates, recipes, etc, and my partner makes them happen)

09. Founder of Community Cabinet (a local organization that handles stuff like)

☆ Organizing a local cleanup or sustainability campaign.

☆ Advocating for a cause (e.g., write op-eds, attend town halls).

☆ Starting a community garden or environmental initiative.

☆ Hosting workshops or awareness events (e.g., mental health, STEM for girls).

☆ Creating care packages for underserved communities.

☆ Helping seniors with tech or digital literacy.

☆ Translating documents or volunteering with immigrant services.

☆ Joining or starting a peer mediation/conflict resolution group.

☆ Participating in civic engagement (e.g., work with local government or campaigns).

☆ Launch a global initiative with chapters in multiple schools or countries.

☆ A multilingual journal publication highlighting global teen voices (I’ve written a couple for our organization)

☆ Informational adulting course (how to file taxes, how to apostille/notarize, how to reconcile a checking account, etc.)

(and more…)

| Year 3 (2023 - 2024)

01. Perfect SAT

02. Perfect Toefl (English), Topik (Korean), Dele (Spanish), Torfl (Russian), and Delf (French) scores

03. Ted x leadership workshop for kids

04. Presidential Scholar

05. 6-week New York Times Editor Assistant Internship

06. Huge Summer Book Tour

07. NHS

08. 8-week Head of Student Research Project at Nasa

09. Won the John Locke Essay Competition

| Year 4 (2024 - 2025)

01. 4.0 gpa (not including the weighted stuff the school throws in)

02. Varsity & Team Captain of: [ in school extracurriculars ]

☆ Basketball team (4 years)

☆ Swim team (3 years)

☆ Track and Field (4 years)

|| Extra sports: [ in and out of school ecs ]

☆ Football (1 year)

☆ Golf (1 year)

☆ Figure skating (5 years)

☆ Rock Climbing (6 years)

☆ Ballet (8 years; varsity)

03. Student Council - Class President

04. Valedictorian

05. Successful publishing company: With 44 books self-published by yours truly before graduation

06. Accelerated Reader Award (450+ books read; all time most books read in my state)

07. A Wikipedia page was made of me by an established user

I was starting to get to the "single-handedly curing cancer," part, but then I realized that just putting down everything on paper was cathartic enough. I'll get my Rory Gilmore moment rest assured, it just won't be a desperate attempt to mourn the teenage dream I never had, when I do...

Though since I'm 18, college is FULLY on the table AHAJSVSSVAVHASVH. Y'all thought this was a letter of resignation or something. I'm just getting started.

[moth-yknowtheartist]

hey guys! Trying something a little outside what I usually post- so excited to share my process here, so please let me know any feedback at all (seriously, should I buy a new microphone?), I'd love to hear from you!!! and for the outro, please give Acher and Gale their well-earned props for their cover of Chase Petra's "Paranormal".

Posted: January 9th, 2024.

TRANSCRIPT:

???:

"To run o’er better water hoists her sails the little vessel of my genius now, which leaves behind her such a cruel sea; and of that second Realm I ’ll sing, wherein the human spirit purifies itself, and groweth worthy to ascend to Heaven. But here let Poetry arise from death, since, holy Muses, yours I am; and let Calliopë, here somewhat higher soaring, with those sweet tones accompany my song, whose power the miserable Magpies felt so keenly, that of pardon they despaired. The oriental sapphire’s tender hue, now gathering in the sky’s unclouded face, as far as to the first of circles pure, began again to give mine eyes delight, when forth I issued from the deadly air, which with its gloom had filled mine eyes and heart. The beauteous planet which incites to love, veiling with light the Fishes in her train, was causing all the eastern sky to laugh."

[TONE FOR A LINE NO LONGER IN SERVICE]

WHObris Icarian or

Daedalian,

am I Pygmalion or? (APHRODITE)

same Talos told again,

runs 0.333333(FREE)3333333333 along the Shore…

enter: Labyrinth.

(overlapping) MOTH:

[improvised starting recording, getting situated getting comfortable speaking to the mic]

> hey everyone! For anyone new to my blog, welcome, this is usually not the norm- mostly I post about puppet history and tech and stuff and I make art sometimes, on rare occasions my robot doppelganger creation takes control of my blog to scam my followers into their murder scheme while I'm busy playing arcade games in hell?

> for any long time followers and mutuals, hi, you're probably used to this by this point. Thanks for sticking with it.

> today, though, I'm starting on a special little project, something a bit closer to my usual tech and malware posting. You guys remember the robot doppelganger creation, right? Well, part of the… issue with them has been a malware infection originating around January of 2023, so- close to a year ago, now? We theorize this anomaly is the reason they've gained sentience and autonomy far beyond what I could have possibly created, why they've persisted so long past their planned funeral-robot lifespan, and why they started on their whole, um… attempted murder spree.

> that being said, I welcome you all to Log 0 of the Acher Malware Remediation project!! These audio logs will serve as my way to log everything I find and try as I figure out what they're infected with, what vulnerabilities this malware exploits and what its payload and impact looks like, and how to safely remove and resolve it. It also works to like… hold me accountable you know? Um- I've kind of been procrastinating on actually starting on this, like I keep talking about it to everyone and like 'ohhh that malware Acher's got I'm definitely gonna get on that and fix that soon' but honestly I've kind of been dreading it because I'm not super experienced and they're a whole person now, so like if I fuck it up it's kind of the equivalent of your hand slipping during brain surgery and OOPS surprise lobotomy!!!

[deep breath and sigh]

> I'm trying to be… more responsible. More careful. I've fucked up enough people's lives through not thinking things through, and- but if I never get this done, that's also irresponsible, letting this infection happen was why so many bad things happened in the first place. So no more procrastinating!!!!! I'm doing this, and I'm posting it publicly on the internet so that everyone can judge me until I finish it!!!!

> to give myself some structure here, and to use the hours and hours of A+ Core 1 and 2 studying that I'm never gonna get back, I'm going to model my investigation and remediation off of CompTIA's 7 steps of malware removal and 6 steps of the troubleshooting methodology. It's basically like the scientific method of IT? Those steps are, respectively-

Identify and research malware symptoms, and Identify the problem. I have a couple different places to look for this- one is obviously inside Acher's system itself, seeing if I can run some diagnostics or observe the malware's behavior to get an idea of what it is, how it works, what it resembles? If I can grab a sample, I can also run that through VirusTotal or something, figure out the malware family, and from there figure out how it's usually dealt with. I can also try and monitor network traffic in WireShark, see if it's communicating with any kind of command and control? But besides those technical steps, I also have the very helpful resource of Tumblr posts made around the time of infection, people I know who were around when it originally happened- those are gonna be huge in figuring out the situation leading up to the infection. Never overlook the human element, people!!

Quarantine the infected system, and Establish a theory of probable cause. The latter is gonna be based on whatever I find in the last step, and the former… should have been done ages ago, but listen, there's only so much a person can do from hell!!! Still, quarantining Acher while I start trying to actually remove things is going to be helpful as far as making sure it doesn't just plant itself in her system again.

Disable system restore in Windows and backups, and Test the theory to determine the cause. The latter is gonna be the most applicable here. Acher doesn't really have… backups? I'm sorry!!! I was planning on him being single use way way in the future, I didn't think I'd have to think about longevity!!!! … But at least it saves me a step here!

Remediate the infected system, and Establish a plan of action and implement a solution. This is the brain surgery part, this is the bit I'm dreading the most, but… assuming I do the last steps right, this will be easy. … These steps of malware removal aren't actually considered, like, best practice, because you can never really be sure you've removed everything. The actual best practice is going scorched earth entirely, assuming you have a backup of anything important, and then just starting fresh from a new OS install or a fresh image. That's… not an option here. Something that hasn't really left my mind since I committed to this project is the worry that, like, I can't remove the malware without removing Acher, who Acher currently is? I mean, I'm pretty sure the infection is part of the reason they actually evolved so much past their original code and developed a personality, independent wants and likes and dislikes and… I'm really worried I can't kill this parasite without killing Acher too. Or, hm, does that make it a parasite or is that more symbiosis?… I'm overcomplicating my metaphors whatever. Acher's being a pretty good sport about this, all things considered, I'm surprised they're actually letting me do this, so… I want to be really careful here. If I can't remove the malware without hurting them in the process, then I figure something else out. I can't afford to mess up here.

Assuming everything else went according to plan, Schedule scans and run updates, and Verify full system functionality and implement preventative measures. Basically fix the mistakes that led to this all in the first place, make sure they don't happen in the future.

Re-enable system restore on Windows and backups, and Document findings, actions, and outcomes. I guess I'm already documenting throughout the process, so I guess I'm getting ahead of this one? See, look, I don't procrastinate everything.

Educate end user. I'm not exactly sure who counts here in this case. Am I the end user, maybe I'm the one who's supposed to have the learning experience here? That would make sense, but also I'm the one learning throughout this whole thing so again I'm kind of already getting ahead of that. Is it supposed to be Acher, maybe? I dunno, I'll get a better idea of it once I figure more out about how the infection happened.

> thanks to everyone listening! Next time, tune in for step one- research time! Also, let me know how my audio is? I did a couple test recordings before I committed to this one and I swear I kept ending up with little bits of corruption or weird background noise. Maybe I need a new microphone.

> cue outro!

[outro does not play; start of a different, candid audio clip]

MOTH:

> [startled noise] JESUS. acher it's 3 am.

ACHER:

i donT sleep. You doNT sleep.

MOTH:

> yeah, but- but gale's supposed to be, so I try to be quiet-

ACHER:

SORRY. couldnT get A thought out Of my head. dO yo.U reMEmber th.e deTAILS of my C.ode?

MOTH:

> [groggy] .... uh, maybe? It's been a while since I... why? why are you doing the ryder thing?

ACHER:

[silence] couldnT get A thought out Of my head. hopeD you could eLUCID.ate.

MOTH:

> you're being weird.

ACHER:

I feel finE?

MOTH:

> okay. ... actually, can you come to the garage? I've been meaning to ask you about stuff anyway.

ACHER:

surE.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting a new Martin Hench novel about the dawn of enshittification

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/2025/01/07/weird-pcs/#a-mormon-bishop-an-orthodox-rabbi-and-a-catholic-priest-walk-into-a-personal-computing-revolution

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by @wilwheaton:

http://martinhench.com

This is the third Hench novel, following on from the nationally bestselling The Bezzle (2024) and Red Team Blues (2023). I wrote Red Team Blues with a funny conceit: what if I wrote the final volume of a beloved, long-running series, without writing the rest of the series? Turns out, the answer is: "Your editor will buy a whole bunch more books in the series!"

My solution to this happy conundrum? Write the Hench books out of chronological order. After all, Marty Hench is a financial hacker who's been in Silicon Valley since the days of the first PCs, so he's been there for all the weird scams tech bros have dreamed up since Jobs and Woz were laboring in their garage over the Apple I. He's the Zelig of high-tech fraud! Look hard at any computing-related scandal and you'll find Marty Hench in the picture, quietly and competently unraveling the scheme, dodging lawsuits and bullets with equal aplomb.

Which brings me to Picks and Shovels. In this volume, we travel back to Marty's first job, in the 1980s – the weird and heroic era of the PC. Marty ended up in the Bay Area after he flunked out of an MIT computer science degree (he was too busy programming computers to do his classwork), and earning his CPA at a community college.

Silicon Valley in the early eighties was wild: Reaganomics stalked the land, the AIDS crisis was in full swing, the Dead Kennedys played every weekend, and man were the PCs ever weird. This was before the industry crystalized into Mac vs PC, back when no one knew what they were supposed to look like, who was supposed to use them, and what they were for.

Marty's first job is working for one of the weirder companies: Fidelity Computing. They sound like a joke: a computer company run by a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest and an orthodox rabbi. But the joke's on their customers, because Fidelity Computing is a scam: a pyramid sales cult that exploits religious affinities to sell junk PCs that are designed to lock customers in and squeeze them for every dime. A Fidelity printer only works with Fidelity printer paper (they've gimmicked the sprockets on the tractor-feed). A Fidelity floppy drive only accepts Fidelity floppies (every disk is sold with a single, scratched-out sector and the drives check for an error on that sector every time they run).

Marty figures out he's working for the bad guys when they ask him to destroy Computing Freedom, a scrappy rival startup founded by three women who've escaped from Fidelity Computing's cult: a queer orthodox woman who's been kicked out of her family; a radical nun who's thrown in with the Liberation Theology movement in opposing America's Dirty Wars; and a Mormon woman who's quit the church in disgust at its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. The women of Computing Freedom have a (ahem) holy mission: to free every Fidelity customer from the prison they were lured into.

Marty may be young and inexperienced, but he can spot a rebel alliance from a light year away and he knows what side he wants to be on. He joins the women in their mission, and we're deep into a computing war that quickly turns into a shooting war. Turns out the Reverend Sirs of Fidelity Computer aren't just scammers – they're mobbed up, and willing to turn to lethal violence to defend their racket.

This is a rollicking crime thriller, a science fiction novel about the dawn of the computing revolution. It's an archaeological expedition to uncover the fossil record of the first emergence of enshittification, a phenomenon that was born with the PC and its evil twin, the Reagan Revolution.

The book comes out on Feb 15 in hardcover and ebook from Macmillan (US/Canada) and Bloomsbury (UK), but neither publisher is doing the audiobook. That's my department.

Why? Well, I love audiobooks, and I especially love the audiobooks for this series, because they're read by the incredible Wil Wheaton, hands down my favorite audiobook narrator. But that's not why I retain my audiobook rights and produce my own audiobooks. I do that because Amazon's Audible service refuses to carry any of my audiobooks.

Here's how that works: Audible is a division of Amazon, and they've illegally obtained a monopoly over the audiobook market, controlling more than 90% of audiobook sales in many genres. That means that if your book isn't for sale on Audible, it might as well not exist.

But Amazon won't let you sell your books on Audible unless you let them wrap those books in "digital rights management," a kind of encryption that locks them to Audible's authorized players. Under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's a felony punishable with a 5-year sentence and a $500k fine to supply you with a tool to remove an audiobook from Audible and play it on a rival app. That applies even if the person who gives you the tool is the creator of the book!

You read that right: if I make an audiobook and then give you the tools to move it out of Amazon's walled garden, I could go to prison for five years! That's a stiffer sentence than you'd face if you were to just pirate the audiobook. It's a harsher penalty than you'd get for shoplifting the book on CD from a truck-stop. It's more draconian than the penalty for hijacking the truck that delivers the CDs!

Amazon knows that every time you buy an audiobook from Audible, you increase the cost you'll have to pay if you switch to a competitor. They use that fact to give readers a worse deal (last year they tried out ads in audiobooks!). But the people who really suffer under this arrangement are the writers, whom Amazon abuses with abandon, knowing they can't afford to leave the service because their readers are locked into it. That's why Amazon felt they could get away with stealing $100 million from indie audiobook creators (and yup, they got away with it):

https://www.audiblegate.com/about

Which is why none of my books can be sold with DRM. And that means that Audible won't carry any of them.

For more than a decade, I've been making my own audiobooks, in partnership with the wonderful studio Skyboat Media and their brilliant director, Gabrielle de Cuir:

https://skyboatmedia.com/

I pay fantastic narrators a fair wage for their work, then I pay John Taylor Williams, the engineer who masters my podcasts, to edit the books and compose bed music for the intro and outro. Then I sell the books at every store in the world – except Audible and Apple, who both have mandatory DRM. Because fuck DRM.

Paying everyone a fair wage is expensive. It's worth it: the books are great. But even though my books are sold at many stores online, being frozen out of Audible means that the sales barely register.

That's why I do these Kickstarter campaigns, to pre-sell thousands of audiobooks in advance of the release. I've done six of these now, and each one was a huge success, inspiring others to strike out on their own, sometimes with spectacular results:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/04/01/brandon-sanderson-kickstarter-41-million-new-books/7243531001/

Today, I've launched the Kickstarter for Picks and Shovels. I'm selling the audiobook and ebook in DRM-form, without any "terms of service" or "license agreement." That means they're just like a print book: you buy them, you own them. You can read them on any equipment you choose to. You can sell them, give them away, or lend them to friends. Rather than making you submit to 20,000 words of insulting legalese, all I ask of you is that you don't violate copyright law. I trust you!

Speaking of print books: I'm also pre-selling the hardcover of Picks and Shovels and the paperbacks of The Bezzle and Red Team Blues, the other two Marty Hench books. I'll even sign and personalize them for you!

http://martinhench.com

I'm also offering five chances to commission your own Marty Hench story – pick your favorite high-tech finance scam from the past 40 years of tech history, and I'll have Marty bust it in a custom short story. Once the story is published, I'll make sure you get credit. Check out these two cool Little Brother stories my previous Kickstarter backers commissioned:

Spill

https://reactormag.com/spill-cory-doctorow/

Vigilant

https://reactormag.com/vigilant-cory-doctorow/

I'm heading out on tour this winter and spring with the book. I'll be in LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Burbank, Bloomington, Chicago, Richmond VA, Toronto, NYC, Boston, Austin, DC, Baltimore, Seattle, and other dates still added. I've got an incredible roster of conversation partners lined up, too: John Hodgman, Charlie Jane Anders, Dan Savage, Ken Liu, Peter Sagal, Wil Wheaton, and others.

I hope you'll check out this book, and come out to see me on tour and say hi. Before I go, I want to leave you with some words of advance praise for Picks and Shovels:

I hugely enjoyed Picks and Shovels. Cory Doctorow’s reconstruction of the age is note perfect: the detail, the atmosphere, ethos, flavour and smell of the age is perfectly conveyed. I love Marty and Art and all the main characters. The hope and the thrill that marks the opening section. The superb way he tells the story of the rise of Silicon Valley (to use the lazy metonym), inserting the stories of Shockley, IBM vs US Government, the rise of MS – all without turning journalistic or preachy.

The seeds of enshittification are all there… even in the sunlight of that time the shadows are lengthening. AIDS of course, and the coming scum tide of VCs. In Orwellian terms, the pigs are already rising up on two feet and starting to wear trousers. All that hope, all those ideals…

I love too the thesis that San Francisco always has failed and always will fail her suitors.

Despite cultural entropy, enshittification, corruption, greed and all the betrayals there’s a core of hope and honour in the story too.

-Stephen Fry

Cory Doctorow writes as few authors do, with tech world savvy and real world moral clarity. A true storyteller for our times.

-John Scalzi

A crackling, page-turning tumble into an unexpected underworld of queer coders, Mission burritos, and hacker nuns. You will fall in love with the righteous underdogs of Computing Freedom—and feel right at home in the holy place Doctorow has built for them far from Silicon Valley’s grabby, greedy hands."

-Claire Evans, editor of Motherboard Future, author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet.

"Wonderful…evokes the hacker spirit of the early personal computer era—and shows how the battle for software freedom is eternal."

-Steven Levy, author of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and Facebook: The Inside Story.

What could be better than a Martin Hench thriller set in 1980s San Francisco that mixes punk rock romance with Lotus spreadsheets, dot matrix printers and religious orders? You'll eat this up – I sure did.

-Tim Wu, Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy, author of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

Captures the look and feel of the PC era. Cory Doctorow draws a portrait of a Silicon Valley and San Francisco before the tech bros showed up — a startup world driven as much by open source ideals as venture capital gold.

-John Markoff, Pulitzer-winning tech columnist for the New York Times and author of What the Doormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry

You won't put this book down – it's too much fun. I was there when it all began. Doctorow's characters and their story are real.

-Dan'l Lewin, CEO and President of the Computer History Museum

[dumbestlittlepet]

this blog is 18+ only! hard kinks ahead!

About me: im 29, transfem, a sub, poly, a dumb puppy, docile dolly, aspiring bimbo and use she/her, it/its or they/them pronouns 🏳️‍⚧️ heavy sapphic leaning, heavy t4t leaning

names/things i like being called: pet, puppy, dolly, slut/whore/etc, good girl, degrading but cute names, give me a nickname 💖

DM's & Asks open/anon on! cis guys please dont be creepy/pls be chill please send me random spirals/hypno, lewds, tasks, etc! 💌 please help keep me hopelessly needy and edging

kinks/no's/dni's below

💕into (bold = fav)💕:

Hypnotism/Brainwashing

Edging/Denial

Tasks/Rules

Pet play

Tech Control/play

Heal/support slutting/lewding video games in general

Bimbofication/Dumbification

Corruption/gaining new kinks/fetishes

Speech Restrictions

Simping for someone or something/obsession-y play (person, hentai, anything :3)

Gags, Breath Control/Choking, Oral Fixation, Blackmail (i dont think id ever do this with someone tho aopeihfapiehg), cnc, humiliation/embarrassment, somno, praise, etc etc etc

maybe:

bathroom control

heavy pain (anything pain is highly dependent on my mood),

nudity (idk just way more comfy in clothes),

thigh pics (nothing else, and this is a huuuuuuuuuuuuge maybe)

no's:

roleplaying

excessive begging

anal (i need better toys, no fingers)

the usual scat/vomit, wetting, etc

pics

If anything isn't listed feel free to ask! im dumb and am forgetting a lot, also im willing to try most things at least once!

DNI:

TERFS/transphobes/bigots/racists/actual misogyny/right wingers

Minors

Blank blogs/ageless blogs (i understand the want for privacy! at least put an age-range, and if your just lurking/following ppl just something super basic in your bio so i know you arent a bot!)

S*ssy blogs, i dont mind if you follow me but I am not interested at all

the usual Zoo/p3do/etc stuff

Last updated: December 29th 2023

[film-in-my-soul]

Dalliance | 500 | schweet_heart / @schweetheart

Summary: “Arthur,” Merlin murmurs in warning. Arthur licks the pad of his thumb, deliberately slowly, looking up at him through the dappled light. Merlin’s eyes are wide and he seems caught off-guard, his expression painfully vulnerable. “You can’t. Not here…” “I’m the king, Merlin,” Arthur murmurs back, releasing Merlin’s thumb to follow the trail down to where the juice had pooled in his palm, moulding his lips to the curve of Merlin’s wrist. “One day you’ll realise that means I can do whatever I want.”

Determination | 500 | schweet_heart / @schweetheart

Summary: Arthur mumbles in his sleep and turns, burying his face in his pillow to get away from the voice. It’s either very late, or very early, the soft patter of rain on the cobbles outside and the distant swish of traffic the only sounds he can hear.

Disintegration | 500 | schweet_heart / @schweetheart

Summary: His wings were burning.

Crosses and Curses | 1,855 | schweet_heart / @schweetheart

Summary: “Arthur,” Merlin hissed. “What are you doing?” Arthur, who was down on one knee, had the gall to roll his eyes. “I’m asking you to marry me, idiot,” he said. “I would have thought that much was obvious.”

(see more recommendations below!)

Fever | 2,091 | ella_bane

Summary: When Arthur orders Merlin to stop doing magic, the consequences are what neither expected. Canon era, hurt-comfort

half sleeping, numb with frost | 2,620 | schweet_heart / @schweetheart

Summary: “Stay here tonight,” Arthur said softly, and although it was framed as an order Merlin could hear the entreaty in his voice. “I want you to stay where I can—where I can see you.” “Mmn,” Merlin said without opening his eyes. “I could be persuaded.”

Now That I'm Rich They Give Me Coffee | 4,686 | lady_ragnell / @theladyragnell

Summary: Arthur's a rock star, Merlin doesn't live under a rock, Morgana's badass, and Will is the worst best friend ever.

Asteroidea | 4,754 | Polomonkey / @thepolomonkey

Summary: Merlin's smitten with his new boyfriend Arthur. Only Arthur seems to be holding back a little in the bedroom. When Merlin finds out why, can he help heal the hurts of the past?

Pink and Black and Blue (For You) | 7,508 | Polomonkey / @thepolomonkey

Summary: When he met his soulmate – if he met his soulmate – they were going to have some serious apologising to do. Arthur's one of the unlucky few with a rather unfortunate soulmate connection - they share bruises. And his soulmate just happens to be the clumsiest person in the world. Between that and Morgana's attempt to set him up with every bruised man she comes across, it's lucky he has friendly IT tech Wizard to keep him sane...

Trouble | 7,827 | derryere

Summary: They're roommates and Arthur's a little infatuated and a dick and stuff.

Onfindan | 15,827 | astolat / @astolat

Summary: Arthur didn't speak to him for a week after he found out.

Hear Your Heart Sing (Love, Love, Love) | 15,834 | schweet_heart / @schweetheart

Summary: Merlin used to like the idea of finding The One – until he fell in love with Arthur Pendragon. Now he has a boss he can't date (but can't stop thinking about), a soulmate he can't find (who has terrible taste in music), and a best friend who can't believe he still hasn't got his act together (even though it's seriously not his fault). Sometimes, life is unfairly complicated, even without your soulmate singing painfully catchy tunes in the back of your head.

The Future Soon | 30,211 | lady_ragnell / @theladyragnell

Summary: Arthur sees a vision of himself and Merlin married and happy, but they can barely stand each other. They both start doing everything they can to avoid it happening.

london fog and technicolour strobe lights | 39,822 | demigodbeautiies / @jackwolfes

Summary: When Merlin left his village ten years ago, he really didn't think he'd end up fucking people for money. He still doesn't know what he expected to happen, exactly, but wishes he could figure it out a little bit faster. Then a run of the mill gig goes wrong and changes the course of Merlin's life - just, not in any of the ways he expected it to. That's the funny thing about a summer in London, though: it is utterly impossible to tell what the hell will happen next.

Blog Info ☆ All 2024 Reclists ☆ 2023 Reclists

[kristynguyen7]

Blog Post #2 - Week 3 (due 2/6)

Cyberfeminism, Technology, and Digital Inequality

Does cyberfeminism help fight gender and racial inequality online, or does it sometimes reinforce these inequalities? 

Cyberfeminism aims to create online spaces for gender equality, but it can also overlook racial differences. Some cyberfeminist ideas assume a white, middle class perspective, leaving out the voices of women of color. Fernandez and Wildling note that much of cyberfeminist writing is targeted toward an “educated, white, upper-middle-class, English-speaking” audience, which can unintentionally exclude others (Daniels, 2009, p. 104). This highlights the need for a more inclusive approach that considers race, class, and access to technology. Additionally, digital activism led by women of color often operates outside mainstream cyberfeminist discourse, reflecting a broader need for intersectionality. While some platforms provide opportunities for marginalized voices, others replicate offline hierarchies, limiting real progress. By expanding cyberfeminism to actively address these exclusion, the movement can become more effective in advocating for digital equity. 

Can people truly escape gender and racial identity online, or do digital spaces still reflect real-world inequalities? 

Some early cyberfeminists believed that the internet allowed people to leave behind gender and racial identities. However, research shows that digital spaces often reflect real world inequalities. Daniels explains that instead of changing identities online, people “actively seek out online spaces that affirm and solidify social identities along with axes of race, gender, and sexuality” (Daniels, 2009, p. 110). Additionally, many online platforms use algorithms that reinforce existing biases, making marginalized identities more visible and subject to scrutiny. While some individuals may feel a sense of anonymity, structural inequalities persist in the ways people interact, build networks, and gain access to digital resources. 

How do cyberfeminist practices differ in the Global North and Global South, and what challenges do women in developing nations face when engaging with digital technologies? 

Cyberfeminist practices vary significantly between the Global North and Global South due to differences in economic resources, access to technology, and sociopolitical contexts. In industrialized nations, cyberfeminism often focuses on online activism, digital art, and gender representation in media. In contrast, women in developing nations frequently use digital technology as a tool for survival, resistance, and economic empowerment. Daniels highlights that “while it is true that many affluent women in the global North have ‘depressingly familiar’ practices when it comes to the Internet, this sort of sweeping generalization suggest a lack of awareness about the innovative ways women are using digital technologies to re-engineer their lives” (Daniels, 2009, p. 103). However, barriers such as limited internet access, censorship, and economic inequality continue to restrict their engagement. Addressing these disparities requires cyberfeminist movements to integrate global perspectives and advocate for digital inclusivity on a broader scale. 

How do race and technology intersect to perpetuate systemic biases in digital spaces, and what can be done to address these issues? 

Nicole Brown discusses how racial biases are embedded in technology, from facial recognition software to algorithmic decision making. These technologies often reinforce systemic inequalities rather than eliminate them. Brown highlights that “facial recognition software has been proven to misidentify Black and Brown individuals at significantly higher rates than white individuals, leading to real world consequences such as wrongful arrests and surveillance” (Brown, 2023). Addressing these issues requires greater accountability in tech development, including diverse representation in AI design, policy changes to regulate biased technologies, and increased advocacy for ethical digital practices. By critically examining the intersection of race and technology, we can work toward creating digital spaces that are equitable for all users. 

How does automation in public services contribute to inequality, and what are its impacts on marginalized communities? 

Virginia Eubanks argues that automation in public services disproportionately harms low-income and marginalized communities by making access to essential resources more difficult. Automated decision-making systems in welfare programs, housing assistance, and healthcare often reinforce pre-existing biases, leading to further exclusion. Eubanks notes that “they are shaped by our nation’s fear of economic insecurity and hatred of the poor; they in turn shape the politics and experience of poverty” (Eubanks, 2018, p.7). These technologies strip people of their autonomy and create barriers rather than solutions. To address this issue, we must push for transparency in algorithmic decision-making and ensure that automated systems are designed with fairness and social justice in mind. 

Word Count: 603

Daniels , J. (2009). Rethinking cyberfeminism(s): Race, gender, and embodiment | request PDF. Project Muse . https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236786509_Rethinking_Cyberfeminisms_Race_Gender_and_Embodiment 

Eubanks, V. (2018). (PDF) Virginia Eubanks (2018) automating inequality: How high-tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor. New York: Picador, St Martin’s press. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337578410_Virginia_Eubanks_2018_Automating_Inequality_How_High-Tech_Tools_Profile_Police_and_Punish_the_Poor_New_York_Picador_St_Martin’s_Press 

[Nicole Brown]. (2020, September 18). Race and Technology [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8uiAjigKy8

[appleceoleadershipstyles]

[Apple,Inc.] Leadership Styles

[Juaneishia]

What makes a leader strategic and innovative? There are components that allow a leader to take over the skills of being strategic and innovative. To have the inclination for long-term success, competitive advantage, problem-solving mindset, adaptability to change, and passion for impact, personal growth, etc. What makes a leader possess dysfunctional behavior? The ingredients are insecurity, ego, greed, inability to delegate, the list is endless but not satisfactory for the company or the employees. As we dive into the different leadership traits of the CEOs of Apple, we will learn the dos and don’ts of being a leader. You will be able to identify what type of leader you want to be for your business or personal growth based on the styles that were depicted by each CEO. Using strategies and innovation will cause challenges to arise; this is normal. “Strategic thinkers question the status quo. They challenge their own and others’ assumptions and encourage divergent points of view. Only after careful reflection and examination of a problem through many lenses do they take decisive action. This requires patience, courage, and an open mind. (Schoemaker, Krupp, Howland, 2013). Dysfunctional leadership is very unprofessional. “Unprofessional behavior can cause discomfort among team members, and it can undermine the leader’s credibility and authority.” (Blog).

Apple, Inc.

Founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne as a partnership, Apple started in the garage of the Jobs family home. Apple would move over the next half century to become one of the largest and most successful tech companies in the world. The first product developed by Jobs and Wozniak was the Apple I computer and according to Wikipedia (2020) was “sold as a motherboard with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips—a base kit concept which was not yet marketed as a complete personal computer.” In 1977, after creating the Apple I computer, Apple became an incorporated company in Cupertino, California. By the time apple had become an incorporation, Wayne had sold his shares back to Jobs and Wozniak. (Richardson, 2023).

After several product successes in 1977, including Apple II and MacIntosh computers, Apple faced trouble in the market. Wintel offered lower-priced PC clones that were operated on Intel software systems. Through this trouble, Apple was faced with bankruptcy. During the challenge of facing bankruptcy, Jobs repaired the failed operating system’s issues and developed new products including iPod, iMac, iPhone, and iPad allowing the company to perform a complete 360 by 1978. (2020).

Apple, after its start, went through a few short-term CEO’s. While the more prominent leaders remain to be Jobs, Wozniak, and Tim Cook, a collaborative modern-aged leader, it is important to acknowledge the role that others had played and how it affected the company and its vision. (2023).

Today, Apple has evolved to offer full-service technology in many varieties. Apple technology now includes headwear, watches, Augmented Reality (AR), streaming and subscription services, music, and more (2025). Apple has effectively adapted to the demand of the consumer through a technological revolution.

References

Schoemaker, P J. H. Krupp, S. Howland, S. (2013, January -February) Strategic Leadership: The Essential Skills. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2013/01/strategic-leadership-the-esssential-skills

Blog. The Top 5 Dysfunctional Behaviors That Leaders Should Avoid. Lolly Daskal. https://www.lollydaskal.com/leadership/the-top-5-dysfunctional-behaviors-that-leaders-should-avoid/

Wikipedia. (2024). Apple Inc. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.

‌ Richardson, A. (2023). The founding of Apple Computer, Inc. Library of Congress. https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/april/apple-computer-founded

Muse, T. (2023, November 27). Apple’s CEO History. Www.historyoasis.com. https://www.historyoasis.com/post/apple-ceo-history

Apple. (2025). Apple. https://www.apple.com/

[snigepippi]

Finished the Danish version of Murderbot Dairies - En Dræberbots Dagbog.

It's fun. It's an enjoyable few hours. But you can feel it's made by a small publisher, Delphiki, who likely don't have much help. There some grammar and three or four formatting mistakes, but not anything I haven't seen from larger publishers.

I love the choices in describing genders. Danish, Swedish and most Norwegian, have two grammatical genders: common gender and neutral. And we have 5 to 6 pronouns depending how you count. (Han, hun, den, det, de and some will also use hen).

Danish is a hard language. One small-talk topic among Danes is do discuss our language and grammar, because even we are uncertain on how we should say something. It is very much a context language. Plenty words have different meaning depending on the rest of the sentence. (for instance "overse" means both "missed noticing" and "being in charge of", and in this book additionally a name). And we use a lot of figures of speech.

So not to be to critical and acknowledging that translation is hard and it has to be more interpretation. I do not agree with all the choices. For instance not translating/explaining "hub" (though how to make "netværksknudepunkt" short is also hard) but they do call it SecEnhed and explain its a mishmash of word. (Sorry @oneiriad it was not translated by mashing sikkerhed and enhed) And they use Ond (evil) for hostiles rather than Fjendtlig(enemy like). I think my experience is affected by my background. It seems like the translator is not fluent in Danish tech language, because I have been trained to use other words and phrases in a scientific context. It does remove some of the fluidity for me, but I don't think people without my background will notice.

But no matter what. I would be happy to recommend it to a friend and I believe they will get the same experience and the same story as reading it in English.

When I posted the front page before, plenty said they liked the artwork. The artist is just called Guilio with no more details. But on the publishers blog they say it's an Italian comic book artist, and after doing some art comparison, I believe its Giulio Macaione (Facebook) who do a lot of queer art.

I hope they will translate more books. But the Publisher's facebook, blog and other update sites, have been silent since August 2023- So I don't know. (Maybe I should e-mail them.)