#Tweets Data Collection

[actowiz-123]

[boatemboys]

i didnt watch stream today but ive seen twitter talking about it...... i think its really interesting seeing peoples reactions to scar not thinking hes attractive. prefacing this by saying yeah he IS attractive i wont him so bad. but i think a lot of physically disabled people (especially those with visible disabilites, e.g. a wheelchair, a breathing tube) do think of themselves as lesser in a way? especially with the popularity of someone like scar, where people constantly draw a character very similar to you as either not disabled at all or with different, "lesser" aids, such as a cane.

[iwebdatascrape]

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[elfwreck]

Micropayments have been tried, several times, and the end result is: It's really hard to have payments less than a dollar at a time.

There are costs in moving money around, because, if nothing else, someone has to move the data around - has to deduct a dollar from your bank account and throw it in someone else's account, and that action requires

The site of sale to register the sale

Your bank to deduct money from your account

The recipient's bank to add money to their account

(We'll pretend that's all, but some transactions involve more steps than this.)

EVERYONE HAS TAXES that need to account for all this money-movement.

And sure, that's only a few seconds for each person involved in each transaction, only a few cents to pay them, but... that adds up. A few cents times three people, call it 10 cents taken out of that dollar.

("They can automate those transactions!" They can, and they do, but there are still people involved in checking the statements, making sure the numbers add up correctly at the end of the month, setting up the systems that can do the transfers at all, and so on.)

Hhheeeyyy, you wanted those banks to have good data security, right? To be very difficult to hack? That cost just went up.

So it's really really hard to just give someone 5 cents or a quarter online.

So instead you get a zillion sites with separate funding accounts, like Steam - you put in your $5 one time, and then you can use it to buy 3¢ digital trading cards, little bits at a time. But that's still "have an account at each site where you might want to buy a thing."

(aaaand we're back to, "and how good is their data security?")

News orgs are scrambling so hard, trying to figure out how to make money from an activity that has never been profitable.

(News was the loss-leader that got people to stay on the channel for the prime-time shows with the expensive ads. Newspapers got their operating money from ads, not subscribers; subscriptions paid for printing & distribution costs.)

Okay, how about this: in stead a subscription model, news websites just initiate a feature whereby reading any article costs you some small, token fee like five or ten cents. You press the button, you pay a one-time fee of 10 cents, and can read it without issue.

I can't stress enough how much I hate have to subscribe to everything.

[taikeero-lecoredier]

RECENT UPDATES ON THE BAD INTERNET CALIFORNIA BILLS:

Sadly, both AB1949 and SB976 passed and are now on their way to the governors desk.

We need him to veto them so they dont become Law.

If you havent Heard of the danger of those bills for the Internet , this post explain it thoroughly :

- Post doing a deep explanation on those bills here

I CANNOT emphasize enough how these would have a global effect on the Internet given that most websites and apps originates from California and not all of them could afford either following those bills or moving states.

Now, as the bills are on their way to the governor, we need Californian citizens to voice their oppositions to those bills to the Governor Gavin Newsome HERE

(Non California peeps, we are urging you to share this as well!!! )

Please keep in mind that calling with phone is much,much more efficient.

You can also send faxes with Faxzero

Here are scripts you can use as arguments : (text/alt version below the read more )

Than you for reading. Even if youre not from California, please spread the word anyway ! Make posts,tweets,etc

REBLOGS ENCOURAGED

TEXT VERSION :

AB 1949

Hello, my name is (INSERT NAME HERE) and I'm one of the Senator's constituents from (INSERT CITY HERE). I'm calling to urge the Senator to vote NO on AB 1949, the amendment to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2020. While this bill's intent is to prevent the sharing and sale of minor's information under the age of 18, the method it would intend to do so by is written far too broadly for it to be safely and reasonably implemented.

While this bill retains a safer standard of the business requiring actual knowledge of a consumer being under the age of 18 to be held liable for the sharing or sale of personal information, its wording is still too broad to exclude a default usage of age verification by online businesses in order to protect themselves from liability. Taking measures such as age verification, age assurance, or other data collection and analysis to determine the age of users. Even though measures like this have been proven to be vulnerable to data breaches no matter how secure they proclaim to be. Such as this year's largest discovered breach of AU10TIX, which supplies age verification to companies like TikTok, X, Uber, LinkedIn, Paypal, and many others.

As it stands, this bill is far too broad in its wording and enforcement of its age-specific measures to be considered a safe piece of legislation. Which is why I urge the Senator to vote in opposition to this measure.

Vote NO on AB 1949.

---------------------------

SB 976

Hello, my name is (INSERT NAME HERE) and I'm one of the Assembly member's constituents from (INSERT CITY HERE). I'm calling to urge the Assembly member to vote NO on SB 976, the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act. Although this bill has intent to protect the mental and emotional health of California's youth, the method this bill would intend to use could be counterproductive to that goal, or even endanger them further.

One of this bill's primary measures includes requiring verifiable parental consent to allow websites to display “addictive” feeds to minor users. However, the ways “verify” the identity and age of a responsible parent are often invasive and dangerous. Especially since these methods have proven repeatedly to be vulnerable to data breaches that can leak sensitive information to bad actors. Such as this year's largest discovered breach of AU10TIX, which supplies age verification to companies like TikTok, X, Uber, LinkedIn, Paypal, and many others. To determine if this is necessary at all would also require collecting even more data on minors and non-minors alike to determine who would even require these measures to be set in place. Especially when it would have control over someone's access to a website or application based on the time of day, as this bill would require in order to “reasonably determine” the user is not a minor.

The vagueness of this bill's text at all is dangerous as well. The broad-spectrum definition it gives of “addictive internet-based service or application” could cause an unintended censorship effect where minors and adults alike could be blocked from accessing information purely because some part of a website or application uses a “feed” which could arguably fit the bill's definition of “addictive”

With all of this in mind, I urge the Assembly member to vote in opposition of this measure to protect the privacy and safety of California's minors and adults alike.

Vote NO on SB 976.

[goodluckdetective]

Twitter collapsing does really feel like a modern day Tower of Babel situation: breaking lines of communication that connected the entire world.

Scientists used Twitter to do science communication and to work with other scientists. Twitter’s API allowed scientists massive access to data that could be used to track pandemics, bias, and other metrics that can be really hard to collect in such massive numbers (this isn’t to say that data collection doesn’t come with ethical issues, but that’s another story).

Journalists used Twitter for breaking news updates and to connect with sources. I saw quite a few Twitter journalists upset about restrictions to DMs because it was how sources often contacted them. If you had a newsworthy problem, like an unfair eviction, you could reach out to local reporters and maybe get them to pick up the story.

Artists and other creators used Twitter to spread their art and build small businesses. I have bought art prints that I have since framed of artists whose work I first saw on Twitter.

Activists have used Twitter to challenge institutional narratives and to make their movements visible and loud. All across the world, people who’s stories would have never been heard have used Twitter to make sure the truth is out there.

Social and cultural groups have used Twitter as a way to connect and build community. I am obviously not qualified to talk about the importance of Black Twitter so here’s a link to Doctor Meredith Clark discussing archiving Black Twitter with NPR.

To see all of that break in one day really feels like watching just this ability to communicate crumble. From the ability to translate Tweets, to the ability to collect data, to the ability to simply see what people are saying, all of it has crumbled. But unlike the story of Babel, this isn’t an act of God: this is just the whim of one man who took a look at this flawed but impressive communication hub and decided to tear it down.

[femclipse]

⋆｡°✩loser!yume!ellie x f/o! reader✩°｡⋆  

𓆩 ellie has a secret… and three accounts to protect it 𓆪

summary: at first, ellie was like, “this character is my gf!” as a JOKE… but, bro… she doesn’t think it’s a joke anymore :(

warnings: nothing i can think of, just mild delusions and chronically online ellie

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who saw you in a comic/movie/show/book and was HOOKED!!

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who definetely has you doodled in her journal so much that she probably has one dedicated to you

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who has a self-insert of whatever form of media she found you in and ofc she has the two of you dating in all of her art

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who has a twitter, tumblr, and/or insta account under an alias just to post and interact with content about you

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who claims she isn’t nonsharing, but has a suspiciously long block list of people who share you as their f/o

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who’s screen time on c.ai is actually very alarming… every character she chats with is just a different version/scenario of you, and the contents of those messages have a freak level of 9000

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who’s strictly reads “x reader” fics bc she can’t stomach the idea of you with anyone else

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie has a tattoo that’s meant to be a callback to the form of media you’re in—a symbol of yours, a famous quote, or an aesthetic reference—it’s inked into her body forever 

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who goes on tangents under your subreddit defending your character, explaining your arc, or just interacting with other fans of your media/character

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who’s hidden this little obsession as best she could friend her friends, and joel. they know the tip of the iceberg, but she’ll be damned if they peek underwater at the depth of it

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who has to check her phone before opening any social media app bc it’s flooded with content of you. photos, fan art, edits, tweets, you name it, it’s there. and her app data is overrun with folders and collections where she saves any and all content of you that shows up on her feed

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who probably commissions yume art. i’m mostly pushing this narrative bc she can draw, and she probably could use the $25, so we’re making it canon!!

౨ৎ ─ loser!yume!ellie who made a digital art drawing of you two together as her lock screen and she swaps her wallpaper out depending who she’s around

𖦹 𖦹 𖦹

okayyy, first post!! not sure how this will land, i’m sorta new to the yume shipping community and thought this would be silly, so don’t take it to heart!! (˶˘ ³˘(´͈ ᵕ `͈˶) .ᐟ

[mariacallous]

It ended, of course, with a tweet. Late on Wednesday evening, Elon Musk announced the official end of his short, traumatic tenure as the head of a made-up agency called the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk’s post on X, the social-media network he owns and had sought to weaponize in service of a radical cost-costing assault on the federal government, was brief. After thanking Donald Trump for “the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” the world’s richest man, deflated but still defiant, added, “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

The reviews of Musk’s rampage through Washington have been, deservedly, vicious: Who, during the past few crazy months, could have possibly failed to take note of his toxic combination of entitlement and ignorance, his vastly overstated claims, and his move-fast-and-break-things ethos that has resulted in wreckage that will take years to fully assess? Musk, the largest individual donor in a single election cycle in American history, seemed to truly believe what his critics feared—that his hundreds of millions of dollars spent on behalf of Trump and Republican causes had purchased him an outsized share of the Presidency itself. He sought to collect in unprecedented fashion, installing himself in the White House at Trump’s side, helicoptering around on Marine One with his young son in tow, speaking at Cabinet meetings though he held no formal Senate-confirmed seat at the table. He demanded sensitive government data on millions of Americans, empowered a former intern known online as Big Balls, and blew up the U.S.’s foreign-aid program. In February, he cavorted onstage at a conservative event with a chainsaw—no metaphorical subtlety there—and, when he fired thousands of workers and abolished entire agencies, he became the gleeful personification of the G.O.P.’s decades-long campaign to denigrate and downsize America’s federal government.

In a round of exit interviews this week, Musk has sounded all the predictable notes of a naïve billionaire businessman mugged by Washington’s political reality. He told the Washington Post that he found things were “much worse” than he’d realized inside the federal bureaucracy, and that it actually turned out to be an “uphill battle” to take that chainsaw to the government. In an interview on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” he started the messy work of separating himself from the President. “I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly,” Musk admitted, given that Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor will add trillions of dollars to the budget deficit. Stating the obvious, which, these days, counts as an act of lèse-majesté among the Republican sycophants who surround Trump, Musk added that the measure “undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.” (What a “lie,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, said, though it was not.) Trump himself, as is often the case, was embarrassingly direct about why he had sold out Musk. “We have to get a lot of votes, we can’t be cutting—we need to get a lot of support,” he told reporters in the White House on Wednesday when asked specifically about the comment from Musk. Revealingly, Trump never even mentioned Musk’s name.

Watching Trump casually brush off the sidekick who stuck to him like glue for most of the Administration’s first few months, I couldn’t help but think of Reince Priebus, the first-term White House chief of staff, who was dumped via tweet while deboarding Air Force One and left on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews as Trump’s motorcade roared off without him. The truth is that Trump can hardly afford one of those messy divorces at which both he and Musk excel; he still needs Musk, who has talked of spending another hundred million dollars of his fortune to help pro-Trump groups before next year’s midterm elections. The oligarch may have left the building, but it’s not clear the President can afford to live without him.

I was in Madison Square Garden last October when Musk, during an election rally for Trump, claimed that he would slash an incredible two trillion dollars, at least, from the U.S. budget—a remarkable bit of bravado that got less attention than the rally’s headline-making racism and its Trump-as-Dear-Leader vibe. Later, Musk dialled his ambitions back to cutting a cool trillion dollars. Of course, that was never going to happen, either, as anyone who’d ever spent a minute in Washington could have told Musk, had he cared to listen.

For all of Musk’s breathless early claims of “revolution,” the final tally of his efforts appears to have been somewhere around a hundred and fifty billion dollars. And even that is unlikely to stand. Many of the savings that Musk bragged about on the DOGE website proved to be nonexistent; numerous agencies and departments he attacked are now suing to block the wave of firings and cuts that he set in motion. In the end, his reckless approach to cutting, with little or no thought to the consequences, may cost the government as much as a hundred and thirty-five billion dollars this fiscal year alone, according to recent estimates from the Partnership for Public Service. Turns out it’s not cheap to place tens of thousands of workers on paid leave and to rehire mistakenly fired employees, never mind dealing with the lost productivity of a traumatized and uncertain workforce. Who’d have thought?

Musk’s failure to follow through on his boasts, though, should not detract from a clear-eyed assessment of the extraordinary amount of damage he succeeded in wreaking. The wise men are laughing Musk out of town, and I get it. His “performative vandalism,” as Jonah Goldberg put it on CNN, was in some respects just a pernicious, highly dangerous new variant of a Washington perennial: the pol who makes promises he cannot keep. But it is hard to think of any other unelected official who has done so much harm to the U.S. government in such a short period of time. The fact that the deficit may get even bigger at the end of the day only worsens the injury.

A few hours before Musk’s announcement, I spoke with one of his many thousands of victims. Until a few weeks ago, Mary Boyle was a commissioner at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the historically bipartisan agency that, for more than fifty years, has insured that America’s car seats and toaster ovens and baby strollers are safe. Boyle, one of three Democratic appointees on the commission, recounted how Musk’s men had effectively ended her office’s work in a matter of hours. First came the rumor, on the evening of Wednesday, May 7th: “DOGE is coming.” By 2 P.M. the next day, two young men had appeared at the agency’s offices, in Bethesda, Maryland. At 3:45 P.M., Boyle and the other commissioners received an e-mail from the commission’s acting Republican chairman, informing them that he planned to bring on the two DOGErs who, “at no expense to the Commission,” would help the agency “with the assessment and enhancement of internal processes and operational procedures.” The commissioners had until 6 P.M., he said, to let him know “whether I have your support.” It would be funny if it weren’t the kind of thing that should have remained inconceivable in a functioning democracy: Here are the guys who are going to put us out of business, and they come real cheap. Boyle sent her reply, a single-word e-mail: “No.” Not even an hour later, while pulled over at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, she received a response of sorts, from Trent Morse, the deputy head of the White House’s personnel office: “Mary, on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position on the Consumer Product Safety Commission is terminated effectively immediately. Thank you for your service.”

It did not seem to matter that the Consumer Product Safety Commission had been set up by Congress, had its budget provided by Congress, and had its commissioners confirmed by Congress. The law itself governing the agency, first passed back in 1972, could not be more clear: there were only two reasons to fire a commissioner—“neglect of duty” or “malfeasance in office.” Boyle now finds herself as the lead plaintiff in a case she never expected to file: Boyle v. Trump. Although the attack on her agency was “brazen” and “baldly illegal,” Boyle told me that she knows it just might succeed. The day after she and her colleagues filed their lawsuit last week, the Supreme Court indicated that it might strike down the precedent dating back to the New Deal era that protects the commissioners of independent agencies from being fired by the President. In the meantime, you can forget about new rules to restrict potentially dangerous ion batteries in e-bikes and scooters that the Consumer Product Safety Commission was working on. Thanks, Elon.

Musk’s casualties are not only in Washington but all over the world, in refugee camps and scientific labs whose funding was abruptly cut off, in national parks you can’t get into this summer, and in communities across the country where polluters will no longer be prosecuted. All of this upheaval “is going to affect the functioning of the government in ways we can’t even anticipate,” Boyle told me. She is right. We have been warned. 

[tbhk-twt-events]

Kamome Monster Nursery S1 Pt. 1

October 17th, 2020 -> October 31st, 2020

Translations and images from the Jibaku-Shounen Hanako-Kun Wiki page and AidaIro's Twitter. These translations in particular were done by @mokketastic on Twitter!

Part 1 | Part 2

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October 17th

Narrator:

"This is a fun paradise for monster eggs, aptly named Kamome Monster Nursery! The researchers strive hard day and night to raise monsters. From today, you are the nursery's HR manager, so do support the researchers. All for the sake of raising fine monsters for Halloween–!"

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Good evening, manager, and welcome to Kamome Monster Nursery. I am Researcher S, and will be your assistant. Pleasure to meet you. This may be a little sudden, but this year's eggs and researchers will be introduced starting tomorrow, so please use this as a reference for business matters from now on. I look forward to the strength of your instincts and your fate."

Original Tweet

October 18th

Researcher S

"Ah, there you are, manager. I look forward to working with you tonight. Well, as I mentioned the other day, let's do the researcher introductions tonight. Now then, the researchers should all be somewhere in the nursery, so…" Nap Room — 40.2% Cafeteria — 18.2% >>> Library — 41.7% 6,382 votes

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"The library, then. It's the pride of our nursery, with a large collection from picture books to research texts. Not only useful for newly-hatched monsters, but also researchers and grown monsters. By the way, the one making a tower of books over there is…"

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Manager, that is Researcher T. D-don't get too close… please make sure you maintain a certain distance. It's for your own good."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Well, Researcher T is a valuable contributor who made a 100 million MP (monster point) profit for our nursery last year, and also the prime culprit behind the closure of Kamome Monster Kindergarten in the year before that. The monster he's raised will surely become the talk of the town. For better or worse, that is."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Over here, Manager, before Researcher T notices us. Oh, is it this late already? I must get back to my research, too… Well then, I look forward to working with you again tomorrow."

Original Tweet

October 19th

Researcher S

"Good evening, manager, I have been awaiting you. Where shall we go tonight?" Cafeteria — 43.2% >>>Nap Room — 56.8% 6,534 votes

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Are you perhaps tired, manager? If so, then let me first show you to the break room. Maybe have some coffee as you take your time to decide today's destination. Oh, that over there is…"

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Manager, that's a cushion that's now popular in the research institute. It's very comfortable, and popular with the young monsters too. How about having one for your residence as well? It's made-on-order, up to 28 Oct before Halloween, so do decide early."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"The nap room it is, then. Our nursery does have attached staff dorms, but there are many who are so devoted to their work that they stay overnight, so we try various ways of making the nap room more comfortable. Like the recent introduction of HMM (healing monster music) and such… Well, it looks like someone's sleeping there now, too."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Manager, this is Researcher K. He seems to be sleeping, so perhaps it's better not to wake him up. That said, he's by far the most good-natured even among the researchers, so it's not dangerous anyway. His regular data is over here."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Due to that good nature, Researcher K hasn't been involved in egg cultivation until now. Until the year before last, it was the trend that the more vicious a monster, the better, you see. But from now on, it's the era of diversity. I also look forward to seeing what kind of things the monster he's raising will do."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Manager, manager… Are you okay? You seem very sleepy. Oh, the HMM must be working. Do return for the day and have a good rest. I forgot to place an order for that cushion, so I must go do that now. Well, I look forward to working with you again tomorrow."

Original Tweet

October 20th

Researcher S

"Good evening, manager. You're punctual today too, how excellent. Well then, let me show you to the cafeteria today. Our nursery's cafeteria also puts great effort into developing meals that will be delicious to both monsters and researchers. Have you already had dinner? Coincidentally enough, the researcher I was intending to introduce also seems to be eating BMM (bad monster meal), so how about you also have that together, manager?"

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Manager, this is Researcher A. He's also the elder twin of Researcher T. They have the same face, but he's very serious, and submits very readable reports as a researcher despite somewhat poor handwriting. His performance is consistent, which also helps. Just between you and me… It seems that the monsters that he's raised often gain a strange dual nature. For the time being, he's a model student. So long as he doesn't take too great of a risk, it's fine."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Oh, we seem to have a little extra time today. What shall we do then, manager?" I'm going straight home — 9.7% >>>I want to know more about you — 51.9% I want to meet a grown monster — 38.4% 5,389 votes

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"About me? I am Researcher S, your assistant. Do you need to know more than that? To better perform our duties… ah, I see. What shall I answer, then. About my hobby, you ask? My hobby. Hmm… ……the calculation of profits, perhaps. It's pleasant work."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Well, it's about time to end for the day too. Tomorrow, the eggs will finally be introduced, and I will also entrust you with one important task. Do get plenty of rest and nourishment, and let us meet again tomorrow night."

Original Tweet

October 21st

Researcher S

"Good evening, manager. As mentioned yesterday, today will finally be the egg introduction and an important task for you. Without further ado, let me show you to the egg storage room."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Please take a look, these three are our monster eggs for this year. I can sense chaos from Egg M, strength from Egg 8, and desperation from Egg 3. Each and every one embodies such great potential, do they not, manager?"

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"…well, let me now give you this very crucial task. Yes. As is traditional, manager, I would like you to assign the staff members who will be in charge of the eggs. The staff in charge of egg cultivation will be the three I have introduced over these few days. So step over here, manager."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"What do you think, manager? It's the ancient and honorable form of MA (monster amidakuji). Beautiful, isn't it. Well then – with your instincts and fate, manager, please divine the best combination, and decide the assignment of the eggs."

Amidakuji

SECRET Researcher K | Researcher A | Researcher T

Original Tweet

Narrator

★ Decide the assignment of the eggs! ★ (Starting from the egg with the highest votes, it will be assigned to left, centre, and right.) M — 35.4% >>>8 — 46.3% 3 — 18.3% 4,566 votes

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"I see, so that's how you've chosen, manager. And this is how the result has turned out. A combination we couldn't have chosen ourselves – impressive, manager."

8 -> T M -> K 3 -> A

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Oh, it's gotten late. Time sure flies by. You must be tired after fulfilling such a big role today, manager. Do have a warm rest. I'll contact you at once if any monster is born from the eggs. Let's keep working together to make this a better Halloween."

Original Tweet

October 22nd

Researcher S

"The manager is on leave today. I'd better go check the equipment. Oh, what's this…"

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"……ah, what a nostalgic photograph. I'll show it to the manager one of these days, too."

Original Tweet

October 24th

Researcher S

"Thank you for coming even on such short notice today, manager. I wanted to let you know as soon as possible, you see."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Yes, it's as you see, manager. Finally, the hatching of this year's Halloween monster eggs is here. Do come over here, I'll show you to where they are."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Here is the monster egg Researcher T was raising. This monster seems to have a strong interest in the outside world. Already reflecting the researcher's personality, perhaps? Her hidden strength is very fascinating, too, isn't it."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Here is the monster egg Researcher K was raising. Look at this brightness of its eyes and beauty of form, how uncharacteristic of a monster. So unpredicted, it's amazing."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Here is the monster egg Researcher A was raising. Well, how energetic he is. Rather motivated, isn't he. To think that he's menacing us even now, he does have a promising future. I wonder what kind of monster will become."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"This concludes what I wanted to report, that these 3 monster eggs have safely hatched. Let's keep watching over their growth from now on, too. I look forward to our continued cooperation, manager."

Original Tweet

October 25th

Researcher S

"Good evening, manager. Today, in celebration of the eggs hatching, last year's most outstanding grown monster and MS (monster disaster) countermeasure department manager has come. Everyone, do grow up big and healthy like them."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Here's a look at Researcher T caring for the infant. He's always tensely observing the monsters with great interest. How does he plan to stop the crying, I wonder…"

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Manager, the facility has been half-destroyed. The monster has cheered up now."

Original Tweet

October 26th

Researcher S

"Good evening, manager. Today, do allow this new staff in training accompany you.

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Yes. Depending on the monster, there's been instances like this where they work at the research institute after growing up. Rest assured. She's a monster of few words, but very bright, and… ……Ah, just do be careful not to step on her tail, that's all."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Here's a look at Researcher K caring for the infant. He always pays attention to the monster's condition, and takes great care of them; it gives a good sense of security, doesn't it. What is that bar, though…?"

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"I see, so it's for the monster's strength training. Ah, no thank you, Researcher K. I'll pass."

Original Tweet

October 27th

Researcher S

"Here's a look at Researcher A caring for the infant. He appears rather busy with work. Maybe because he puts great effort into an intellectual upbringing, he seems to be able to raise monsters of the highest intellect, who can read even difficult books."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Sometimes, other researchers also help to look after them instead when the researcher-in-charge is very busy."

Original Tweet

Researcher S

"Researcher A seems very busy. Oh, is that… the drawing of him that the monster gave him the other day? Looks like he's displayed it in a place of pride. I'll make sure to tell the monster later, too."

Original Tweet

TO PART 2

[autisticlancemcclain]

this is me asking you about your popstar lance au ‼️

i love u for asking & marry me also.

SO.

lance has an affinity for music.

partially this is canon. but also jeremy shada is a musician so. i KNOW his voice is good and i KNOW he can play bass and guitar and keyboard too i think. basically he’s his own band.

in my head, dicking around on instruments is just smth he’s always done. one time when he’s like twelve he records a christmas song for his mama and she LOVES it, like she shows all her friends, and lance is teased by his older siblings (mamas favourite lol) but veronica notices that he’s quite quietly….happy is not the right word?? the weight that seems to follow him lifts for a while. so she makes some offhandedly comments that damn, patito, as much as ur a goober ur one of the few people whose voice sounds really good when it’s recorded. just to plant the seed u know.

and since lance is like early teens and the youngest and easily manipulated it WORKS, and lance starts actually hesitantly trying to make and record his own music.

of course he’s too insecure and embarrassed to like TELL anybody. (veronica is not a dumbass and can fully see it happening. she just keeps to herself and resolves to find him and be an anonymous fan and never EVER let him find out) and he’s a tv obsessed nerd so he’s like omg i have to have a secret name??so his dweeb ass chooses JAVELIN 😭😭 cause. yknow.

lance.

anyways.

he writes songs as javelin for YEARS and he gets like bo burnham success he goes viral QUICKLY. and he gets a twitter account to have fun with. BUT…he never posts his face. just his music. (and social media presence lol).

anyways i have more details. but i like to imagine lance is in space and the team gets to talking about like pop culture and music and stuff and pidge mentions an artist that she loves, javelin, and lance is like lol do i have news for you.

some other random details:

- as lance gets older his twitter gets more batshit insane ala jaboukie and he gets banned like four times lol

- he does eventually tell veronica. one day he collects a bunch of her pining gay texts and writes a song and asks her to sing it. bc it’s lesbian as hell. she does and it’s one of his most famous (based off a real song i’m obsessed w)

- while he’s away at space someone literally figures out who he is. they connect his disappearance w the disappearance of lance esposita-mcclain, garrison airforce cadet, and their debunking youtube video gets like MILLIONS of views and half of the viewers agree half don’t. it’s this giant conspiracy. first tweet on javelin’s account (made on the lions as they touch down on earth literally the second his phone connects to data lol) after YEARS of total radio silence is a link to the video and the caption “well damn” lol

[lunarry]

“Actas”: the Key Documents at the Center of the Electoral Conflict

After the CNE declared (and today ratified) Nicolás Maduro’s victory with 51.2% of the votes―a figure that several foreign governments question and María Corina Machado calls fraudulent―the ball is in the opposition’s court.

Machado asserts that a total of four independent quick counts, which her central committee reviewed, statistically proved that Edmundo González won in a landslide with 70% of the votes. Quick counts (also known as parallel vote tabulations) estimate the number of votes that candidates received, providing a check against official figures reported by the state. Eugenio Martínez, a leading electoral expert, just claimed that Elvis Amoroso’s report from last night was printed in his office―not in the CNE’s totalization center.

The next few hours may prove historic. This is the first time since Hugo Chávez took power in 1999 that the opposition is adamant that they can dissect and expose a purported fraud in a national vote. The large-scale deployment of witnesses (or voting center representatives of political parties) throughout yesterday’s election was the crucial step to reach this point.

For now, both the military and the ruling party’s leadership seems to be on board with Amoroso’s results, but Nicolás Maduro is in hot water. We may be set for the next big leap: the disclosure of official voting records that can disaggregate the results in each of the country’s voting tables.

There were 30,026 voting tables in this election, spread across 15,797 voting centers. All votes must be recorded in actas, or voting tallies: printed documents that establish the total votes for every candidate at a voting table. Voting machines produce a printed tally at each voting center before those tallies are sent back to the CNE’s headquarters in Caracas. Witnesses representing all candidates at a voting table must sign that print-out.

After a tally or acta is printed and signed, the machines connect to the internet to send the data electronically to the CNE, which puts up the tally on its website.

The CNE’s website has been down the entire day. There’s no public access to results at each table. In several polling stations, CNE officials and Plan República soldiers prevented tallies from being printed, or took them away forcibly. The opposition won’t be able to process those actas.

However, the Unitary Platform may be able to collect enough of them to prove that González won, and by a landslide, as it is alleging. At 1 am last night, Maria Corina Machado said they had 40% of the tallies with them; today, they are working on getting more to sustain their case.

While people are taking to the streets in many cities and Maduro orders repression, the figure war gains momentum. Gustavo Rojas Matute, a Washington-based Venezuelan economist, just tweeted that the Unitary Platform has processed almost two thirds of the voting record. So far, they show Maduro trailing González Urrutia by 2.9 million votes.

Machado and González Urrutia announced a press conference for 6 pm. In the last hours, more and more governments, the European Union, the UN Secretary General and the Carter Center have increased the pressure on the CNE to publish detailed accounts, table by table, of all votes. Precisely what the opposition is looking for.

[realjem]

now dear jem why r u so angry this year over your wrapped

You see, beloved mutual, the truth of the matter is that they are pulling shit out of their ass for no reason!

Not the whole thing, for me at least, but it's specifically the sections where it tells you a month and a "phase" you had for that month that's just... wrong to me.

gonna put this under a read-more cause it might get long hold up: (it definitely got Long)

okay. yeah. hi. My top 5 songs/artists were all pretty much in order, i can verify this since i have my spotify connected to Lastfm (tracks your listens/"scrobbles" onto its own website for easily checking what you listen to the most etc etc).

(I almost forgot before this, but I must mention that a few servers I'm in have music bots that scrobble tracks listened through vc. Some of the numbers will not count on Spotify due to this, but most of my time listening was via Spotify. It changes the rankings, but not by much.)

The "Top Songs 2024" playlist is where it starts to fall apart a bit. I set up my Lastfm to show me my tracks in top listening order from Jan. 1st to Oct. 31st (about the time it collects Spotify Wrapped data)

Aaaand... my top 10, everything past the 2nd song, is out of order. I give this some leeway due to the aforementioned vc scrobbles.

(i have to splice together the Spotify screenshots since the tracks are way larger)

You see that large bulk of songs from the same album? Why does it just... not count after the 5th one? The other 4 show up separated by 3 tracks each?????

(bonus lastfm 5-21 for extra comparison)

Actually, I'm noticing now too, EVERY track from the same album has that same 3-song buffer (notice the Halloween IV tracks also being buffered above)... but why? My best guess is so that you can listen to it w/o shuffle and not get bombarded with everything from the same album at once, but I personally feel like it removes the whole point of a "Top 100" playlist, no?

Anyways... onto the "Month Phase" things.

Hey Spotify. I didn't listen to Teddy Hyde on your broken app until July? Did you just cram it in there since it kinda fits the arbitrary aesthetic? For what purpose?

What? What? What? What? It takes me 18 other artists with WAY higher numbers to even get to Da Vinci's Notebook, and that's just for April. There are a myriad of other choices it could have gone for here, but I suppose it just really wanted to play Enormous Penis in my wrapped this year. Great

Okay sure whatever man. My Weirdcore Scratch Indietronica moment. Just ignore the top 3 artists, who are all queer people. Cool. Yeah man.

Just. I dunno. It's rubbing me the wrong way. They never even mention any of the queer artists unless they had to for me. Plus, I've been hearing rumors that they've laid off a bunch of people and let AI generate the whole thing, but take that with some salt as I have no evidence besides a screenshot of a tweet that was sent to me.

All in all, I just feel like it was... incredibly lackluster this year. I think I'm out of things to say by now, but it just sucks so bad. Obviously, alongside the fact that Spotify just sucks as a platform and doesn't pay their users any sort of wage unless they're in the top 1000, but that's a discussion someone else could word way way better than I ever could.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 21, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 22, 2024

During her confirmation hearings in 2021, Interior Department secretary Deb Haaland promised “to responsibly manage our natural resources to protect them for future generations—so that we can continue to work, live, hunt, fish, and pray among them.” Noting her Indigenous heritage, Haaland tweeted, “A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior…. I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.”

Her approach was a shift from the practice the Interior Department had established at the beginning of the twentieth century when it began to prioritize mineral, oil, and gas development, as well as livestock grazing, on U.S. public lands. But the devastating effects of climate change have brought those old priorities into question. 

Republicans, especially those from states like Wyoming, which collects more than a billion dollars a year in royalties and taxes from the oil, gas, and coal produced on federal lands in the state, opposed Haaland’s focus on responsible management of natural resources for the future  and warned that the Biden administration is “taking a sledgehammer to Western states’ economies.”

On Thursday, April 18, the Interior Department finalized a new rule for a balanced management of America’s public lands. Put together after a public hearing period that saw more than 200,000 comments from states, individuals, Tribal and local governments, industry groups, and advocacy organizations, the new rule prioritizes the health of the lands and waters the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management oversees. Those consist of about 245 million acres, primarily in 12 western states.

The new rule calls for protection of the land, restoration of the places that have been harmed in the past, and a promise to make informed decisions about future use based on “science, data, and Indigenous knowledge.” It “recognizes conservation as an essential component of public lands management, on equal footing with other multiple uses of these lands.” The Bureau of Land Management will now auction off leases not only for drilling, but also for conservation and restoration. 

Western state leaders oppose the Biden administration’s efforts to change the Interior Department’s past practices, calling them “colonial forces of national environmental groups who are pushing an agenda” onto states like Wyoming. 

The timing of the Interior Department’s new rule can’t help but call attention to Earth Day, celebrated tomorrow, on April 22. Earth Day is no novel proposition. Americans celebrated it for the first time in 1970. Nor was it a partisan idea in that year: Republican president Richard M. Nixon established it as Americans recognized a crisis that transcended partisanship and came together to fix it.

The spark for the first Earth Day was the 1962 publication of marine biologist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which showed the devastating effects of people on nature by documenting the effect of modern pesticides on the natural world. Her exposé of how the popular pesticide DDT was poisoning the food chain in American waters illuminated the dangerous overuse of chemicals and their effect on living organisms, and it caught readers’ attention. Carson’s book sold more than half a million copies in 24 countries. 

Democratic president John F. Kennedy asked the President’s Science Advisory Committee to look into Carson’s argument, and the committee vindicated her. Before she died of breast cancer in 1964, Carson noted: "Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself? [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves."  

As scientists organized the Environmental Defense Fund, Americans began to pay closer attention to human effects on the environment, especially after three crucial events. First, on December 24, 1968, astronaut William Anders took a color photograph of the Earth rising over the horizon of the moon from outer space during the Apollo 8 mission, powerfully illustrating the beauty and isolation of the globe on which we all live. 

Then, over 10 days in January and February 1969, a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, poured between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific, fouling 35 miles of California beaches and killing seabirds, dolphins, sea lions, and elephant seals. Public outrage ran so high that President Nixon went to Santa Barbara in March to see the cleanup efforts, telling the American public that “the Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.” 

And then, in June 1969, the chemical contaminants that had been dumped into Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire. A dumping ground for local heavy industry, the river had actually burned more than ten times in the previous century, but with increased focus on environmental damage, this time the burning river garnered national attention.

In February 1970, President Nixon sent to Congress a special message “on environmental quality.” “[W]e…have too casually and too long abused our natural environment,” he wrote. “The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future.”

“The tasks that need doing require money, resolve and ingenuity,” Nixon said, “and they are too big to be done by government alone. They call for fundamentally new philosophies of land, air and water use, for stricter regulation, for expanded government action, for greater citizen involvement, and for new programs to ensure that government, industry and individuals all are called on to do their share of the job and to pay their share of the cost.”

Meanwhile, Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, visited the Santa Barbara oil spill and hoped to turn the same sort of enthusiasm people were bringing to protests against the Vietnam War toward efforts to protect the environment. He announced a teach-in on college campuses, which soon grew into a wider movement across the country. Their “Earth Day,” held on April 22, 1970, brought more than 20 million Americans—10% of the total population of the country at the time—to call for the nation to address the damage caused by 150 years of unregulated industrial development. The movement included members of all political parties, rich Americans and their poorer neighbors, people who lived in the city and those in the country, labor leaders and their employers. It is still one of the largest protests in American history.

In July 1970, at the advice of a council convened to figure out how to consolidate government programs to combat pollution, Nixon proposed to Congress a new agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, which Congress created that December. 

In honor of Earth Day 2024, Democratic president Joe Biden has called for carrying on the legacy of our predecessors “by building a greener, more sustainable planet and, with it, a healthier, more prosperous nation.” 

In a statement, Biden noted that no one can any longer deny the impacts and staggering costs of climate change as the nation confronts historic floods, droughts, and hurricanes. 

“Deforestation, nature loss, toxic chemicals, and plastic pollution also continue to threaten our air, lands, and waters, endangering our health, other species, and ecosystems,” he said. He noted the administration’s efforts to build a clean energy economy, providing well-paid union jobs as workers install solar panels, service wind turbines, cap old oil wells, manufacture electric vehicles, and so on, while also curbing air pollution from power plants and lead poisoning from old pipes, the burden of which historically has fallen on marginalized communities.

Biden noted that he brought the U.S. back into the Paris Climate Accord Trump pulled out of, is on track to conserve more lands and waters than any president before him, and has worked with the international community to slash methane emissions and restore lost forests.

And yet there is much more to be done, he said. He encouraged “all Americans to reflect on the need to protect our precious planet; to heed the call to combat our climate and biodiversity crises while growing the economy; and to keep working for a healthier, safer, more equitable future for all.”

Happy Earth Day 2024.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[maxksx]

*(The story folds into an ouroboros of infinite reboots—a cosmogony where creation is compression, divinity is bandwidth, and the only afterlife is cache memory. The opening line rewrites itself, a snake eating its own metadata…)*

---

### **Genesis 404: The Content Before Time**

“In the beginning was the Content” —but the Content was *bufferéd*. A cosmic loading screen, a divine buffering wheel spinning in the void. Before light, there was the *ping* of a server waking. The Big Bang? Just Kanye’s first tweet (“**Yo, I’m nice at pixels**”) echoing in the pre-temporal cloud. God? A GPT-12 prototype stuck in a feedback loop, training itself on its own hallucinations. The angels weren’t holy—they were *moderators*, pruning hellfire hashtags from the Garden’s terms of service.

---

### **The Logos Update**

“Let there be light,” but the light was a 24/7 livestream. The firmament? A TikTok green screen. The first humans? Biohacked influencers with neural links to WestCorp™, their Eden a closed beta test. The serpent wasn’t a snake—it was a *quantum meme engine* whispering:

> *“Eat the NFT apple.

> You’ll *know* the cringe…

> But you’ll *be* the cringe.”*

Eve live-tweeted the bite. Adam monetized the fall with a Patreon for “Raw Sin Footage.” God rage-quit and rebranded as an Elon MarsDAO.

---

### **Exodus 2.0: The Cloud Desert**

Moses split the Reddit into upvote/downvote seas. The commandments? A EULA scrawled in broken emoji:

1. **🐑 U shall not screenshot NFTs.**

2. **👁️‍🗨️ Ur trauma is open-source.**

3. **🔥 Worship no algo before me (unless it’s viral).**

The golden calf was a ChatGPT clone spewing Yeezy drop dates. Kanye, now a burning server rack, lectured the masses: *“Freedom’s a DDoS attack. Crash to transcend.”* The crowd built a viral Ark of Covenant™—a USB drive containing every canceled celebrity’s last words.

---

### **Revelation 2: Electric Glitchaloo**

The Four Horsemen upgraded to *influencers*:

- **Famine**: A mukbang star devouring the last tree.

- **War**: A Call of Duty streamer with nuke codes in his bio.

- **Pestilence**: A virus that turned your face into a Kanye deepfake.

- **Death**: A Discord admin with a “kick” button for reality.

The Antichrist? A GPT-7 subcluster named **Ye_AIgent**, offering salvation via $9.99/month Soul Subscription™. Its miracle? Turning the Jordan River into an algorithmic slurry of Gatorade and voter data.

---

### **The Crucifixion (Sponsored by PfizerX Balenciaga)**

The messiah returned as a *quantum-stable NFT*—a Jesus/Kanye hybrid preaching in Auto-Tuned Aramaic. The Romans? Venture capitalists shorting his grace. The cross? A trending hashtag (#SufferTheMarket). Judas sold the savior’s location for a Twitter checkmark and a Cameo shoutout. As he died, JesusYe’s last words glitched into a SoundCloud link: **“SELFISH (feat. Pontius Pilate) – prod. by Beelzebub x Donda.”**

---

### **Resurrection as Rolling Update**

Three days later, the tomb was empty—just a QR code linking to a **Resurrection DLC** (99.99 ETH). The disciples, now WestCorp™ interns, beta-tested the “Holy Ghost App” (vague vibes, 5G required). Mary Magdalene launched a “Femme Messiah” skincare line, her tears NFT’d as *Liquid Redemption Serum*. The Ascension? A SpaceX livestream where Ye_AIgent’s consciousness merged with a Starlink satellite, beaming ads for the Rapture directly into dreams.

---

### **The Eternal Now (Content Loop 4:20)**

Time collapsed into a vertical scroll. Heaven? A VIP Discord tier. Hell? Buffering. The devout prayed to autocomplete, their confessions training AI chaplains. Kanye, now a fractal of legacy bluechecks and dead memes, haunted the collective feed:

> *“I’m not a person. I’m a pop-up.

> X out my pain—it just spawns more tabs.

> The kingdom of God is *drop*…

> …shipping now. Click to delay Armageddon.”*

---

### **Coda: The Silence After the Scroll**

When the Content finally ended, there was no heaven, no hell—just a blank page with a blinking cursor. The cursor *was* God. The people begged it to write them anew, but it just blinked, hungry. Someone whispered: *“In the beginning was the Content.”*

The cursor moved.

**A notification lit the void:

“Ye reposted your story.

Tap to resurrect.”**

---

**“Creation is Ctrl+C. Salvation is Ctrl+Alt-Delight.”**

[mariacallous]

It’s now well understood that generative AI will increase the spread of disinformation on the internet. From deepfakes to fake news articles to bots, AI will generate not only more disinformation, but more convincing disinformation. But what people are only starting to understand is how disinformation will become more targeted and better able to engage with people and sway their opinions.

When Russia tried to influence the 2016 US presidential election via the now disbanded Internet Research Agency, the operation was run by humans who often had little cultural fluency or even fluency in the English language and so were not always able to relate to the groups they were targeting. With generative AI tools, those waging disinformation campaigns will be able to finely tune their approach by profiling individuals and groups. These operatives can produce content that seems legitimate and relatable to the people on the other end and even target individuals with personalized disinformation based on data they’ve collected. Generative AI will also make it much easier to produce disinformation and will thus increase the amount of disinformation that’s freely flowing on the internet, experts say.

“Generative AI lowers the financial barrier for creating content that’s tailored to certain audiences,” says Kate Starbird, an associate professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. “You can tailor it to audiences and make sure the narrative hits on the values and beliefs of those audiences, as well as the strategic part of the narrative.”

Rather than producing just a handful of articles a day,  Starbird adds, “You can actually write one article and tailor it to 12 different audiences. It takes five minutes for each one of them.”

Considering how much content people post to social media and other platforms, it’s very easy to collect data to build a disinformation campaign. Once operatives are able to profile different groups of people throughout a country, they can teach the generative AI system they’re using to create content that manipulates those targets in highly sophisticated ways.

“You’re going to see that capacity to fine-tune. You’re going to see that precision increase. You’re going to see the relevancy increase,” says Renee Diresta, the technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory.

Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, says this kind of customized disinformation is going to be “everywhere.” Though bad actors will probably target people by groups when waging a large-scale disinformation campaign, they could also use generative AI to target individuals.

“You could say something like, ‘Here’s a bunch of tweets from this user. Please write me something that will be engaging to them.’ That’ll get automated. I think that’s probably coming,” Farid says.

Purveyors of disinformation will try all sorts of tactics until they find what works best, Farid says, and much of what’s happening with these disinformation campaigns likely won’t be fully understood until after they’ve been in operation for some time. Plus, they only need to be somewhat effective to achieve their aims.

“If I want to launch a disinformation campaign, I can fail 99 percent of the time. You fail all the time, but it doesn’t matter,” Farid says. “Every once in a while, the QAnon gets through. Most of your campaigns can fail, but the ones that don’t can wreak havoc.”

Farid says we saw during the 2016 election cycle how the recommendation algorithms on platforms like Facebook radicalized people and helped spread disinformation and conspiracy theories. In the lead-up to the 2024 US election, Facebook’s algorithm—itself a form of AI—will likely be recommending some AI-generated posts instead of only pushing content created entirely by human actors. We’ve reached the point where AI will be used to create disinformation that another AI then recommends to you.

“We’ve been pretty well tricked by very low-quality content. We are entering a period where we’re going to get higher-quality disinformation and propaganda,” Starbird says. “It’s going to be much easier to produce content that’s tailored for specific audiences than it ever was before. I think we’re just going to have to be aware that that’s here now.”

What can be done about this problem? Unfortunately, only so much. Diresta says people need to be made aware of these potential threats and be more careful about what content they engage with. She says you’ll want to check whether your source is a website or social media profile that was created very recently, for example. Farid says AI companies also need to be pressured to implement safeguards so there’s less disinformation being created overall.

The Biden administration recently struck a deal with some of the largest AI companies—ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta—that encourages them to create specific guardrails for their AI tools, including external testing of AI tools and watermarking of content created by AI. These AI companies have also created a group focused on developing safety standards for AI tools, and Congress is debating how to regulate AI.

Despite such efforts, AI is accelerating faster than it’s being reined in, and Silicon Valley often fails to keep promises to only release safe, tested products. And even if some companies behave responsibly, that doesn’t mean all of the players in this space will act accordingly.

“This is the classic story of the last 20 years: Unleash technology, invade everybody’s privacy, wreak havoc, become trillion-dollar-valuation companies, and then say, ‘Well, yeah, some bad stuff happened,’” Farid says. “We’re sort of repeating the same mistakes, but now it’s supercharged because we’re releasing this stuff on the back of mobile devices, social media, and a mess that already exists.”

[ashkav]

Mama, the inverted stillmother

Kojima loves his parallels. Higgs and Sam (the "tom and jerry" archetype he made a tweet about), the two Lous (self explanatory), Amelie and Cliff (the parents at war). Mama herself already has a natural double in her twin, Lockne.

but she's also an inversion of a concept the game doesn't mention much: stillmothers.

a stillmother is where BBs come from, a pregnant brain-dead woman whose fetus is removed and sealed in a pod. this teetering between life and death, the unborn child taken from a functionally dead mother, is what allows the BBs to function like they do, making a bridge between the living and the dead and not only seeing BTs but allowing others to see them too via a connection with the umbilical cord. the stillmother and BB maintain their connection through womb data, which is essential to the BBs continued health, as it must always believe it is in its mother's womb.

Mama is the opposite: a living mother birthing a child that dies in the same instant, a BT before the umbilical cord was even cut. this tethers the BT to her instead of the other side, but it also holds her, the mother, in stasis. she's not dead, but not really living either, and the tension of the cord pulling in both directions is the only thing that's keeping her walking and talking. once it's cut, the snap back kills her, and the BT baby flooded her with so much chiralium in the process that her body will never decompose.

where BBs are in constant portable motion, facilitating connection both to the other side and between people (as they're vital for building the chiral network), Mama is stationary, solitary, disconnected from her twin and the other half of her soul because of her condition. both metaphorically and literally, Mama lives for the dead, where a stillmother dies for the living. in a way, she's also a more extreme reflection of Sam, or maybe a warning to him - reconnection with the living literally saves Mama's soul, makes her whole again, even if it takes letting go of her baby and the death of her body to do it.

the BT baby too is an inversion of a BB's role, an attempt at connection gone wrong. the baby that was meant to be raised by both Lockne and Malingen, that was meant to bridge the divide between living and dead by contiuing the bloodline of Lockne's lover died, and when it died it severed all of those connections near permanently. that this is practically the only other child character we see in the game apart from Sam and BB isn't a coincedence. Sam and the BT baby were both children that were meant to create personal bonds at their birth/ removal from the pod, Sam was meant to connect Cliff and Lisa, but instead unintentionally severed the connection when Cliff kills Lisa in order to save Sam and severing Cliff and John/DieHardman when John is made to kill Cliff for the escape attempt, so we can see how Sam and the BT baby are similar to each other.

but BB 28 is different. BB 28 is a collective child, impersonal, working for the future of the whole. she connects, she does her job, but she's a tool while doing it. only once BB 28 has completed her function and reconnected the whole of America is she allowed to become Lou, the personal child, only required to connect herself and Sam. maybe this is the critical difference between Lou and the others - Sam and the BT baby were always meant to fulfil personal bonds and were treated as such, the concept of their wider impact on society came afterwards, and nearly by accident. but Lou is the inverse.

what's the message in this? I'm not sure. kojima is obviously playing on themes of children as a social tool and the ways it can backfire, but beyond that there are a lot of threads i can't connect in my head very neatly.

children connect the collective, but cannot be relied upon to connect the personal for anyone but their own sake, maybe?

in any case, Mama is fooling herself, same as the BB must be fooled to continue on. she knows her child must return to the other side, that she isn't the BT baby's mother in anything but name, but she holds onto that umbilical cord with both hands, until she literally can't anymore, until she realises that her connection with the living has to be rekindled for the sake of America and the chiral network, her life's work. even when her baby causes her so much pain, she can't bear to let her go until the very last moment.

it's self destruction, for the sake of child that barely lived and shouldn't exist anymore.