#but with intention and like... ethically collected data lol

[ratbastarddotfuck]

I dislike large scale generative AI as much as the next guy but every time someone says it "isn't real art" I get the spiteful urge to use it in some way for a complex postmodern art piece where the point is "everything is art, actually, and your arguments are flawed". and I'd hope that it would live in people's heads rent free the same way that damn urinal has lived in art purists' heads for years now.

but I can't do that with generative AI that exists currently because I do in fact hate the plagiarism machine.

[max1461]

Just read Scott Alexander’s post on “conflict theorists” vs. “mistake theorists” and, hmm. I have several thoughts. First, to summarize the concept for anyone who hasn’t seen it before: Alexander links to a reddit post by user u/no_bear_so_low, who originated the idea, saying

There is a way of carving up politics in which there are two basic political meta-theories, that is to say theories about why different political ideologies and political conflict exist. The first theory is that political disagreements exist because politics is complex and people make mistakes, if we all understood the evidence better, we’d agree on a great deal more. We’ll call this the mistake theory of politics. For the mistake theorist, politics is not a zero-sum game, but a matter of growing the pie so there is more for everyone. The second theory is that political disagreements reflect differences in interests which are largely irreconcilable. We’ll call this the conflict theory of politics. According to the conflict theory of politics, politics is full of zero-sum games.

u/no_bear_so_low claims that both the far left and far right are more amenable to conflict theory than liberals are, who lean more towards mistake theory. Alexander seems to agree, though in his own post he’s speaking mainly about Marxists in particular. He summarizes the concept as follows:

To massively oversimplify:

Mistake theorists treat politics as science, engineering, or medicine. The State is diseased. We’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure. Some of us have good ideas, others have bad ideas that wouldn’t help, or that would cause too many side effects.

Conflict theorists treat politics as war. Different blocs with different interests are forever fighting to determine whether the State exists to enrich the Elites or to help the People.

In addition, Alexander subdivides the categories further into “hard” and “soft” versions:

Consider a further distinction between easy and hard mistake theorists. Easy mistake theorists think that all our problems come from very stupid people making very simple mistakes; dumb people deny the evidence about global warming; smart people don’t. Hard mistake theorists think that the questions involved are really complicated and require more evidence than we’ve been able to collect so far [...]

Maybe there’s a further distinction between easy and hard conflict theorists. Easy conflict theorists think that all our problems come from cartoon-villain caricatures wanting very evil things; bad people want to kill brown people and steal their oil, good people want world peace and tolerance. Hard conflict theorists think that our problems come from clashes between differing but comprehensible worldviews.

So what do I think about all this?

Well, it seems to me that this framework is (a) a fairly reasonable descriptive dichotomy, in the sense that, yes, a lot of people do genuinely seem to fall into one of these two camps, and (b) a horrible dichotomy on which to base any prescriptions about political meta-theory, in that these are both awful (and obviously wrong) ways to think about the world. Now, Alexander doesn’t explicitly give any such prescriptions, but he does describe SCC as “hard mistake theorist central”, and generally speaks of mistake theory in approving terms, while speaking of conflict theory in disapproving ones. I think this is bad.

At a base level, my problem with both these “theories” is that they’re, in some sense, just too optimistic.

I agree, for example, with the hard mistake theorist sentiment that the world is full of extremely challenging technical problems, that these problems can be the source of real human suffering, and that the only way to address these problems is through data collection and empirical analysis and hard technical work. And I agree that this will often produce unintuitive conclusions, that run against people’s gut sense of what the right policy might look like. I agree that the state is diseased. I do not agree that “[w]e’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure.” People, it turns out, often do have genuinely different and irreconcilable values, and genuinely do envision different ideal worlds. In addition to that fairly mundane observation, there genuinely are a lot of bad actors, who are just in the game for their own benefit. The world is full of grifters, schemers, and petty (or not so petty) tyrants; on an empirical level that’s just not something you can deny.

On the other hand, I agree with the easy conflict theorist sentiment that, e.g., “bad people want to kill brown people and steal their oil.” There’s plenty of pretty immediate proof of that to be found if you look into the history of colonialism¹, or the slave trade, or US foreign election interference in the twentieth century. Actually, just so I’m not pissing anybody off by only mentioning “western” examples, I’ll include the Khmer Rouge and the Holodomor and comfort women and uh, you get the picture. For god’s sake, the Nazis really existed, and yeah, they really believed all that Nazi shit. In retrospect they may seem like implausibly evil cartoon villains, but in fact they were real flesh and blood humans, just like the rest of us. You think that was just a one-off?

And on a much more mundane note, sometimes (actually, very very often), ordinary people just have incompatible ethical axioms. Sometimes people have genuinely different values, and there are no rational means to sort out which value-set to choose. I suspect this is at least part of the reason for the rationalist community’s skew towards mistake theorizers, in that their favored intellectual tool has more-or-less nothing to offer when it comes to selecting your values (=ethical axioms, =terminal goals, etc). I mean, of course rationality is good for diagnosing contradictions in your value set, but it can’t tell you how to resolve those contradictions. That’s the domain of intuition, empathy, and aesthetics, were data cannot light your way.

However, I do not agree with the conflict theorists’ underlying sentiment that if “the good people” were just in charge, everything would be better. After all, there are all those pesky technical problems with unintuitive solutions getting in the way, requiring all kinds of expertise and thorough empirical study and uh, plenty of them might not even be solvable.² This is a huge deal. It’s incredibly easy to have the best of intentions and still make horrible mistakes by virtue of just... happening to have the facts wrong. Not through malice, or self-interest, or even some nicely-explainable sociological bias like white fragility or whatever. Just because problems are hard, and sometime you will fail to solve them. Even when people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake.

Here’s a handy latex-formatted table for your comprehending pleasure:

lol, we live there.

So this all sounds a bit pessimistic and, well, I suppose it is. I think we have a responsibility to acknowledge the gravity of our situation. We could, conceivably, live in a world that was structured according to either the conflict theorist’s vision or the mistake theorist’s vision, but we don’t. We live in a much scarier world, and if we don’t face that terrifying reality head-on, we’re not going to be able to overcome it.

Now, in general, I’d say I spend a lot of my internet-argument-energy-allowance trying to persuade [what I perceive to be] overly conflict-theorizing leftists in the direction of a greater recognition of the genuine technical difficulty of the problems we face. It's probably worth making a separate post about why I think a “denial of unintuitive solutions” is so common on the left, but I’ll just mention here that I think it relates to what I once jokingly called the “Humanistic gaze”. That is, the bias to view everything quite narrowly through the lens of the humanities, and to view all problems as fundamentally sociological in nature. When the world is constructed entirely by humans and human social relations, there’s a level at which nothing can be unintuitive. After all, an intersubjective world must ultimately be grounded in subjective experience, and subjective experience is literally made of intuition.

I usually don’t spend much time pursuing the dual activity (trying to argue liberals out of [what I perceive to be] an overly mistake-theorizing perspective). This is largely because, well, I think the optimistic assumption that mistake theorists make —that most people have basically compatible goals, and that relatively few people are working out of abject self-interest or hatred or whatever— is so obviously false that it doesn’t warrant as much genuine critique as it warrants responding with memes about US war crimes. The principal of charity is best extended to ideas, not people or institutions. You can take the neocons’ arguments seriously without extending charity to the neocons as agents.

The post concludes with Alexander writing

But overall I’m less sure of myself than before and think this deserves more treatment as a hard case that needs to be argued in more specific situations. Certainly “everyone in government is already a good person, and just has to be convinced of the right facts” is looking less plausible these days.

And uh, yeah. Indeed.

So, in conclusion: is politics medicine, or is it war? No, it’s politics.

There are disagreements, and conflicts of interest, and coalition building, and policy-wonkery, and logistics. There is, as with anything involving the state, the implicit threat of violence. (That’s where the state’s power comes from, remember? Whether it’s their power to tax, or their power to enforce individual property rights to begin with. Their power to regulate or build infrastructure or legally construct corporate personhood or whatever. There’s more than a bit of game theory involved, sure, but the rules of the game are set through the armory.) Every scholarly technocrat with double-blind peer reviewed policy suggestions still ultimately just decides who the guns get pointed at, if at several layers of abstraction. Every righteous people’s vanguard is still bound by the mathematics of production and the dynamics of a chaotic world. There are no easy solution, not conceptually easy nor practically easy. And unless we recognize that on a very deep level, we have no chance of fixing anything.

[1] I’d quote my go-to example here, of the truly ghastly stories relayed to linguist R. M. Dixon by the Dyirbal people of Australia about their subjugation at the hands of white settlers, but unfortunately I don’t have his book with me at the moment. Also this post would require several additional trigger warnings.

[2] I mean, after all, there are only countably many Turing machines, and the set of all languages with finitely many symbols has cardinality 2^(aleph_0)!

[doktorpeace]

🖊 please introduce us to Erato, I know they're in a masks campaign but I have no idea what else

Oh, gosh, I feel like I talk about them too much as is but I can’t say I’m not glad to have the excuse. This is gonna be really long cause tbh I’m just gonna dump like, a bunch of their lore lmao.

Erato is my Masks: A New Generation character in a campaign being played alongside @twerkyvulture (As Amanda ‘Megafauna’ Ghorbani, The Transformed) @draayder (as Josephine ‘Rattlesnake’ Short, The Reformed) @spitblaze (as Les ‘Void’ Hawking, The Doomed) @heedra (as Enid ‘Frag Beetle’ Day, The Scion) and @skarchomp (as Parker ‘Cobalt’ Andrews, The Legacy) with @dykeceratops as our GM. The current arc features @mechanicalriddle as Zoe, The Nova as a guest member. Here’s a group shot done by @tredlocity. Clockwise from the top left: Cobalt in blue, Erato in the track suit, Les in the cloak, Zoe with the mismatched eyes, Enid’s the big robot, Amanda’s got the scales and claws, and Josephine’s got the mask and tonfa.

To get back to Erato specifically though they’re an Anti Metahuman/Metahuman Suppression Weapon created by the in universe tech group Wright Industries, founded by Ingrid Day, Enid’s mom. They’re generally stronger, faster, and more durable than humans and can copy the superpowers of others for 5-10 minutes by touching them thanks to what is basically a meta-stem cell transplant interacting with other parts of their systems. (Also, I 100% swear to god that I did not consider ‘Robot Hero Who Copies The Powers Of Others’ is literally fucking Mega Man despite loving Mega Man a ton until after I had hashed out the concept with my GM’s assistance. Only once Abby said ‘oh like mega man’ I was like ‘wait, shit’.) I’ll tell you some about them as a person before unloading their history onto you, lol. Being an android built for combat and kept in an underground research lab, kept on a rigid schedule, constantly taking tests, physical, mental, written, oral, ethical, etc. etc. etc. and under constant supervision Erato lacked for real interactive experience before the campaign started only really ever getting to takl with authority figures and their sisters. They were very passive and observational, owing in part to their power set requiring a lot of adaptation to make the most of. They’re naive and very bad at exercising discretion in decision making, sometimes they overstep boundaries when talking with people without meaning to, and they’re really emotional! They have trouble dealing with strong emotions cause they haven’t managed to discover coping mechanisms that work well for them, they tend to get angry kind of easily and need time to blow off steam. But they’re also very genuine, honest, and well meaning. They are almost never mean, rude, or snippy, they do their best to do well by others, and have a strong sense of justice paired with a deep distrust and dislike of the current legal system in universe. This is in part due to the conditions of their creation (and in part because the intent behind it was kind of right!) and in part due to Enid’s life being threatened by a representative of the state while they and their teammates were in jail after being arrested following a huge brawl with an anti-methuman terrorist group. They’re also very willing to put forth the effort to improve as a person and to mend relationship wounds, almost always apologizing first to Enid when they fight and genuinely trying to work in advice and feedback they get from others, which they often get from Les and Parker. They’re also relatively educated, from the tests of their creators, from home and public schooling, from personal research, but that doesn’t undo their naivety. They also just straight up lack some very basic and/or common sense knowledge. Like, they don’t know what a bear is. Why would you teach a battle android working in a densely populated, extremely built up city about wild animals? All in all they’re kind of inexperienced and immature and make mistakes a lot but they’re (usually) very willing to admit their mistakes and to try and improve and get better. They genuinely and truly want what’s best for others and are learning to value them self as much as their teammates. They’ve also taken it upon them self to start doing humanitarian work in their free time over the summer. In a fight Erato is adaptive and quick witted but tends to put themself in more danger than is necessary. They also sometimes use more extreme force than the others believe is called for, but after the first time they did they and Parker had a real heart to heart about it, Les helped Erato learn and practice some coping, centering, behaviors they could do even under pressure and Erato did their best to adapt. That said they Fucking Hate The Keeper So God Damned Much Because Of How Much Suffering He’s Caused Their Friends And How Much Danger He Presents And Would Kill Him With No Remorse. So they don’t intend to apologize for ripping his arms off whatsoever. They and their sisters, collectively known as The Muse Units, were made to work as a group and as a proof of concept that atomized units could replace traditional police for use against metahuman criminals and to slowly phase out The Registry, the legal department which handles general metahuman based laws. If successful the units could be mass produced and improved upon, rapidly replacing current, error prone, law enforcement. At the time of their development, between late 1999 for blueprint drafting and until mid 2002 when the project was shut down, they were the cutting edge for AI development aided in no small part by Ingrid’s technokinetic powers allowing her to make advancements few others could. (As a note Erato’s body was finished being built in early 2001 but their unique personhood didn’t really come to fruition until February 18th, 2002, so that’s what I consider their ‘birthday’.) Ultimately, however, while a few of the Muses excelled some did not perform to expectations, the project fell behind schedule, investors lost interest, and a minor scandal involving a casualty happened, resulting in the project being shut down. The Muses were placed in indefinite storage, the data gained from their short existence used on other projects such and some of the tech advancements used to inform future decisions by the company. And it would have stayed that way, if not for the fact that in 2018 Ingrid Day was revealed to be The Locust in a conflict where Enid tried to defend her against a militia group who had been hired to take her down, being shot and presumably killed in the process. As The Locust she had been terrorizing Boston for over a decade trying to take it over and being involved in the deaths of over 70 people. (Which irl btw would make her like, the 8th most prolific confirmed serial killer of all time, Yikes!) Wright Industries, desperately needing to prove their hard stance against metahuman criminals and needing a PR stunt to deflect from their connection to their former CEO re-awakened Erato. They weren’t the most powerful or best performing of the Muses, but they were above average, obedient, and had an easy enough to monitor and control power set with little risk for property damage to boot, the perfect choice. Erato then took to the streets of Boston acting basically as a vigilante, following orders, stopping minor crimes, and sometimes working alongside the police. They attracted the attention of The Viceroy, a semi-retired 56 year old hero who never registered in spite of it being compulsory legally. They both have the ability to copy the powers of others, though he can just by sight, and he has body elasticity too. These make him durable and extremely adaptable, add to that his detective skills and he’s something of a local Boston legend. He took them in as his Protégé. Though they remained distant for quite some time with Erato still coming and going between his place and Wright Industries, having promised not to reveal his assistance to the doctors who Erato reported their work to. It was this way for about a year and a half before the campaign started and Erato began living with Viceroy full time, no longer wanting to go back to Wright Industries as they began to think more independently and consider what they wanted for them self more. During this time Erato had chance encounters with each of the other characters a few times as they also did minor vigilante work, peaking with a villain who is a member of Superhuman, an extremist pro-metahuman group, attacked the school that Josephine, Les, and Amanda all attend. After that incident Erato was prompted by Viceroy to contact each of these other young potential heroes to form a team, The Upstarts. Additionally during this time Viceroy took in Enid who had been abandoned by her biological father and had been getting bounced around foster care. Over time the three of them have become kind of a weird family, living in a warehouse full of cats with a couple of bedrooms grafted on and an ultra secret basement lair underneath full of advanced stuff Viceroy makes. Though Erato and Enid have definitely had their ups and down, more recently in the story (and we’ve been doing this campaign for well over a year now) they’ve been putting in serious effort to better their relationship and be good adoptive siblings to one another. I love their relationship a lot, they’re good kids.

That gets us up to the start of the campaign but hoo boy, I’ve been writing for like, an hour now. Since then Erato’s helped take down a nazi-aligned terrorist organization, they’ve got a boyfriend in their teammate, Les, and they’ve made friends outside of their core group of teammates. They’ve also enrolled in school doing well on some classes and poorly in others, namely learning how to Code and Woodworking. Currently they’re at a sleep away summer camp for superpowered kids called Camp Justice, about 10 miles outside of Boston. They really, really hate it there. Constant supervision, being made to do tests, things scheduled out against their will, inability to leave the area? Yeah that certainly reminds them of something. The difference between it and school, which does share these features, is they wanted to go to school. They very much Did Not want to go to camp. As a result they’re finally going to have to start facing the trauma they’ve got from their origin and also actually tell the others other than Les and Amanda about their sisters. Whiiiiich...Enid saw one of them disassembled and showed off in parts at a school science fair display set up by Wright Industries to gauge interest in students. And she hasn’t mentioned this to Erato...for 4 months Uh Oh! Lastly, here’s my tag I use mostly for art I make of them, it includes some texts posts and picrew dumps too though, lol. Feel free to look!

[galfridus1]

Data Privacy Day (late lol)

So yesterday (Jan 28) was data privacy day. Data security is something I’m really passionate about (I work with data for a large organisation and protecting it is one of my main responsibilities).

Here are some hints and tips for securing your personal data that I’ve learned along the way.

Sorry for the long post. The read more code isn’t working for me on my phone today.

1) Look at what the data will be used for.

This is a bit obvious but it does need saying. Don’t give away anything you don’t want to.

If you are in the European Union your data is protected by the General Data Protection Regulations or GDPR which came into force in May last year. Your data is permitted to be used and stored for several reasons but if there is no legal gateway for using/storing/sharing it (like for safeguarding reasons, to ensure contracts can be processed or for the public interest) then the organisation/person collecting it needs your informed, opt-in consent.

I.e. they want to send you marketing information? They need to say please tick if you would like to receive marketing information (the old please tick to opt out trick is no longer allowed). They are not allowed to say that you can only access some service or other if you tick yes. So if you wanted to go to a children’s centre with your kid for example they are not allowed to say you can’t go unless you sign up for marketing emails.

I know the GDPR has had really bad press on this site but it is a really important set of regulations that absolutely has the consumer in mind. It is complex and a lot of organisations are struggling with it because there’s not much case law yet but the intent is to protect users like us. And I believe after the dust has settled it will work. Google for example got slapped with a significant fine recently for misusing personal data. I would encourage you to find out more about the GDPR if you are in the EU.

2) Where is the data stored?

Companies often say “your data will be stored securely”. Well where, how? Where a server is based is entirely relevant: some are more safe than others. The European Union? Pretty safe as it goes. The US? Much more hackable honestly. There are some countries where the data are extremely vulnerable if the server is there.

Are your data going to be stored in an anonymised, encrypted format? There’s no point saying you will ensure anonymity in sharing/dissemination if the raw data links up information so that a hacker can see you name, address, income, what you ate for breakfast etc all in the same place is there? The better research organisations give people a unique id and store things like survey responses etc with that attached instead of names and addresses.

Who is going to access the data and for how long? Data should be deleted when it is no longer required. Companies should have a data retention policy. So HR records for example, a company needs to keep them while you are employed with them obviously, and for a period afterwards in case you take them to tribunal or require a reference. Do they need it 5 years after you have left? After 10? These are important questions to ask. If there are no answers the organisation or person you are dealing with has not given enough thought to protecting your data.

3) Do not underestimate how much data your smartphone network provider has about you.

I went to a presentation years back from a large mobile phone network provider in an EU country. They could tell you for a typical smartphone user: when they woke up, where they lived, what they did in the morning (do they check emails, play games, read the news, watch porn?), what mode of transport they took to work, where they worked, how long they worked, what they do at work, what time they go home and by what mode of transport, what they do at home, when they go to bed, where they spend the weekend and what they do.

If you don’t want your network provider to know where you are at any point in time turn off GPS. Check how the data are stored and what they are used for.

4) Be careful with research (interviews, surveys).

I say this as a researcher. My organisation does a lot of important research so we can make things easier for our clients, so we can ensure the products and support we provide are what is required, so we can make changes to the way we interact with our clients so that they have a better experience. This is all valid research. We protect our colleagues’ and clients’ data with diligence. We make mistakes of course but we do our utmost to minimise risks and we report things to the correct authority if there are problems. We are upfront with the people whose data we collect.

Things to look out for to show that the researchers/company/individuals have thought about research ethics and how to best protect your personal information:

- who is collecting the data (both the organisation carrying out the research and who funded it)

- who will access the data (number of people, teams, which organisations etc depending on the research)

- what the data will be used for/ the purpose of the research

- how will the data be stored and for how long

- how will results be disseminated

- you should be reminded that you have the right to withdraw permission for your data to be stored at any time

- if the organisation wants to link the data you provide with other sources they should get your explicit permission (this isn’t sinister - it can be used to minimise respondent burden by asking you fewer questions or to try and ensure data accuracy or to improve the types of research that can be done - they just need to be upfront about it).

I personally feel obligated to take part in any research where I am requested to participate as someone who asks people to share their data for a living but NOT if the above conditions have not been met. I do this for the people I request data from and I expect the same level of thought from those I share data with.

5) Social media research is becoming increasingly important - do not provide your location if you do not want your data used.

Posts and profile information on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc are all scraped up by social media analysis tools so that they can be analysed. Companies use this for things like sentiment analysis (what do people think of my organisation/product?) and more and more to address more complex research questions like where will the next outbreak of norovirus occur (that is genuine research, very clever, uses mentions of vomit and chundering etc to triangulate with heath provider data where the next wave of norovirus will occur).

If you don’t want your information used like this my number one tip is do not add in your location to your profile. People mostly want to know what country you are in for this sort of work.

When reporting social media analysis, there are ethical questions being asked in the research community about how far it is acceptable to include direct quotations in reports. Obviously if you have a public account and your post is quoted then someone can cut and paste it into a search engine and find you. Bear in mind one school of thought is, the user made it public, so it is fair and fine to quote it.

Honestly do not put anything on social media you would not be happy with your parents and employer seeing. Even if your account is private Some providers sell aggregated anonymous data for research purposes.

Please protect your data.

[seedoflife]

Far More Than Just Political Ads

The root word in politics is power.

FB has proven within the 2016 POTUS election that it has achieved the capacity to guide, nudge, and amplify who has power and who does not.

As a result, every technology company is categorized as having the same power individually and as part of a collective ecosystem.

Today it would seem as if humans are ultimately making the decisions on how to apply the data but when combined with artificial intelligence, we literally rip the bandages off anything covered or perceived to be protected.

The dilemma for FB specifically is that it has created revenue streams for anyone willing to pay to play.

The dangers on the other side of the coin is that there are no limits or restrictions on the fields of human or technological endeavors where the levers can be pulled in any direction.

It is as if these technology and social media companies can not only accept advertising dollars for your chosen field, industry, or endeavor, but they can tell you or create the field, industry, or endeavor that you should be participating within.

It is essentially “Profitability and monopolies within every endeavor as humans are optional”.

The amount of reverse engineering possibly good, bad, ugly, positive, and negative is mind blowing.

Imagine the world’s shortest man in history past, present or future. Imagine that man somehow defies all odds to play in the NBA to the point where every historical records are being broken at a pace never seen before.

Imagine the endorsements and accolades received on and off the court.

Imagine the need for protective services and security wherever this supposed athlete appeared and was rumored to appear or endorse any events regardless of his attendance (political rallies, restaurants, or any type of social events).

Imagine all of this with and without our current pandemic era and social distancing practices.

Imagine then the revelation that the athlete had paid a specific company as a gateway enabler for it all in spite of the athlete having known or should have been identified and known immoral, illegal, and unethical behavior, practices, and tendencies the entire time.

Or the company paid him (like other athlete and entertainers).

Wouldn’t the stock price of the company who received the revenue from this person or paid him still skyrocket?

Would the company have to bear any weight or punishments for enabling the athlete’s behavior, practices, and tendencies as well?

The first company to be seen as fulfilling this imaginary story is Facebook and every other technology and social media company are backpedaling to not be seen as having the same power and intentions of being viewed as evil.

My immediate poster child for being the short athlete is 45.

In spite of being immoral, illegal, and unethical with multiple eyewitnesses and scenarios, he was still elected and almost re-elected.

The technology companies are on the same level as the Chinese laboratory in Wuhan believed to be where Covid-19 was created, discovered, and/or manufactured.

The various governments around the world are already attempting to restrict, weaken, control, and shut down such companies now and in the future.

The United States is the first government in the batter’s box simply because it is where Facebook is geographically headquartered.

It is not wild to imagine that a digital CDC is needed for mental thought and decision making as well.

It is why there are growing fields related to combining ethics in technology.

FB’s dilemma is in playing both sides of the table as both gambler and casino down to the point of knowing what the shortest players are looking at and thinking behind closed doors.

Still don’t believe me?

Note that the pages, profiles, and accounts of the radical group QAnon have been taken down or removed from FB and other places at a minimum.

Note that months if not a few years ago when Minister Farrakhan, Alex Jones, and several other controversial and polarizing figures were kicked off Twitter, YouTube owned by Google, and Facebook in varying degrees.

The only entity that is likely to be capable of stopping or slowing down anything similar to a government are Apple for the iPhone and Google for owning the Android platform.

This is why Facebook has attempted to go on the offensive against Apple.

Apple has first exposed where Facebook has taken various liberties within the mobile technology that have been ignored and overlooked.

Yet Apple is in a role of either do it or face the same consequences and repercussions of both not doing it or having the capacity to being viewed as being the same type of threat.

Personally, I’m late to the game in seeing all of this. I was just looking for a better understanding of my industry and where the opportunities would exist.

I did not expect to see the rituals of the technology and governments themselves lol

Once seen, there are no ways of unseeing any of it!

It is enough to put one in a fetal position and await the knocking on the door lol

As some people have said, “The Matrix is more than a movie. It is a documentary”.

I’m just a squirrel trying to get a nut and transfer the money from the theory to accounts to compete in philanthropic ways with Mackenzie Scott’s contributions lol

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[aceofwands]

Ria hateblogs Discovery: Episode 9 (I can’t even be bothered looking up the title), liveblogged to @kendradaynes

we cut back to Discovery in orbit of Pahvo waiting for the Klingons to arrive. apparently the Vulcan Admiral has ordered all Federation ships to go back behind Federation lines, and is ordering them to retreat????

how ... does that make sense? like yes, they blew you up last time. but what has Starfleet been doing the past 6 months? twiddling it's thumbs?? is Discovery's dumb spore drive their only innovation?? they haven't come up with any other new weapons or tactics or anything?

Lorca is arguing to save the Pahvans - like why is Starfleet not pro saving these aliens lives? they're trying to save the Discovery instead. shouldn't they send every ship they've got?

apparently, he's just explained (I keep pausing it again lol) they're NOW trying to regroup to crack the secret of the invisibility screens. this is just so bad. and as usual, defies all belief! they haven't been working on this the entire time??? they need all these warships to retreat to help out with this????? 

like what. it doesn't even make sense

"You want me to run from a fight, and leave a peaceful species to face annihilation" - Lorca, for once arguing for the right thing, solely because the plot needs him to, but also because vengeance lol

he's going along with the order ... at Warp 5 ... because he has no intention of reaching their destination (starbase 46) because if you're planning on defying a direct order, best not to advertise the fact ... ummmmmmmm what? huh? what exactly are they gonna do about it if you do??? this show is so dumb Shin I swear to god

they now have 3 hours to figure out how to get through the invisibility screen apparently. even though we all know Klingons can't fire while oh that's right it's not cloaking technology -eye roll-

he's now talking to Stamets about faking a reason they can't jump (and i'll probably stop pausing it to explain every little plot nuance cause then I'll be here all night and like, I have better things to get back to after this lol)

LOL Stamets is now being ordered to get a full physical at medical. and run every test possible. for their fake alibi. except he's freaking out because LOL he's been having really obvious issues that no one has reported cause Tilly is dumb and I guess everyone else has been brushing it off??? 

idk I can't even come up with reasonable excuses any more. it just makes zero fucking sense and I am so glad it's going to be done for the next 2 months

also my friend shared a rumour that they're going to be stranded Voyager style so we'll see

I haaaaate the warp effect, stupid JJ abrams BS

Michael just called it a cloak. WHICH THE KLINGONS DO NOT HAVE FFS. they're science-ing it up ......................................................... their solution ... is to beam aboard the Klingon ship ... and put sensors on board........... I can't even Shin. that is the dumbest fucking plan I've EVER HEARD

Tyler is now explaining how they'll use the Discovery as bait ....... they're talking about how the Klingon ship has to lower its cloak to fight them, and that's the window they'll use ... but then like ..... if they're fighting them .... they won't be cloaked .... .... so what's the issue? why are they even doing this?

HUH now Michael's saying it'll take days for them to collect this sensor data. and Lorca is all "we don't have days, but we do have a spore drive"

fuck off with this dumb show already omfg

cut to Doc Culber being all 'lol you wanted evidence there was an issue HOLY SHIT IS THERE AN ISSUE' apparently it's reshaping his brain. Lorca isn't phased. because Stamets is claiming he isn't experiencing side effects. why is everyone on this crew so stupid???

now Lorca wants him to make 133 jumps to get the sensor scans super quick. Lorca is making a sorrowful speech. Stamets is like 'the system isn't prepared for this' now Lorca's telling him that won't stop him cause he's an explorer, didn't stay in a lab, blah blah blah.

Lorca has been accumulating data on the jumps the whole time. oooooooooh and they've been seeing pockets of parallel alternative universes. Lorca does not seem surprised by this ... Mirror Lorca theory is seeming more legit

"We have to win this war, but then" "then the journey continues" yeah like this dumb show cares about exploring diddly

Tyler is requesting Michael accompany him to the Klingon vessel ... that did NOT go well last time ... but she's the only one who knows where some thing is on the ship. Michael's now telling Lorca off for not wanting her to go. blah blah blah impassioned speech. she's the most qualified to do this, blah blah, or else she has no purpose here blah blah

uuuuugh it's so tedious Shin. I wish you were watching at the same time solely so I didn't have to explain all the dumb shit because there is just ... so much 

LOL so Doc just came to say he's gonna make sure they take precautions with Stamets and Tilly is all 'oh I'm so glad he finally told you about the side effects'. Doc: "SIDE EFFECTS?". Doc is PISSED. understandably. Stamets looks so betrayed - yeah like it's Tilly's fault you're an idiot. he looks so sad going in

ugh Lorca is giving a speech "when I took command of this vessel, you were a crew of polite scientists, now I look at you, you are fierce warriors all. No other Federation vessel is capable of pulling this off, just us."

the Klingons arrived, Disco jumped back. uuuuuugh Klingon scenes. "the humans are fools" well you're not wrong Kol

what exactly are these dumb Pahvans doing now these two enemies are here anyway? exactly nothing because their purpose is served

apparently they have pattern simulators that will mask Tyler and Michael's human lifesigns. because THAT'S a thing that exists ffs!

the battles are seriously like video games. they look SO fake, and the pew pew phasers are the worst!

but we're already with Tyler and Michael on board the ship, their bloody sensor things TALK TO THEM! they're on a STEALTH MISSION! it literally said out loud "uplink to Discovery established" WHY WOULDN'T YOU PUT IT IN MUTE?guarantee someone's gonna hear it when they put another one

Michael is now detecting a human lifesign. and is insisting they have to go after it. why wouldn't you plant the sensors first ............ he just told her she had 60 seconds to crack the door and then when she didn't do it first go, immediately said 'let me try' like ummmm worst dialogue ever. he's pulled off the panel with a knife and cut the cords lol. 

and what a surprise, it's the admiral they all forgot about! L'Rell is in here too. Tyler has his phaser pointed at her, and she's getting up. flashback to her torturing him. Tyler's freaking out, Michael stunned L'Rell

he's the only character I care about atm, some actual decent acting

LOL the Admiral just explained that she's treated patients like him with PTSD and he's in shock NO SHIT

Michael is leaving Tyler and the Admiral to go and plant the sensor on the bridge or whatever

cut back to the battle .... this is one of the worst space battles I've ever seen! they only showed the briefest bit - it doesn't even feel like the ship is at battle!

that is the quietest, most chill Klingon bridge in battle I've ever seen

the Discovery is jumping around shooting it ... why do they even need sensors to find the cloak frequency from on board the ship???????

THIS PLAN MAKES NO SENSE

IF THEY HAVE A SENSOR ON BOARD THE SHIP THEN THEY HAVE THE LOCATION OF THE SHIP

THEY CAN JUST SHOOT AT THEM????????????????????????????????

*OUTRAGED NOISES*

Disco is jumping around getting its wild scans. but no surprise Stamets is being massively effected. if only he'd told anyone other than Tilly about the side effects he was experiencing!

the Admiral is counselling Tyler .... explaining that he's experiencing past trauma ... usually I'd be all about Star Trek tackling trauma, and it's not entirely terrible, but ugh

the music is all tragic strings while Stamets is starting to go crazy. Doc is begging them to stop. but Lorca is ordering them to continue ....... how is this EVEN MORE ethically dubious than the Equinox?!

the Klingons have picked up sabotage on board. Michael is now shooting them - I think they were gonna warp away? idk

OMFG SHIN so Michael just said she wanted to talk to Kol (she was literally hiding right on the bridge, but because it's a giant stupid cathedral it wasn't hard to hide) and - get this - is explaining that she didn't speak Klingon, she's using a universal translator "an example of human ingenuity"

KLINGONS HAVE FUCKING TRANSLATORS

THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE

HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN FUCKING ENTERPRISE? they have an entire fucking Klingon court scene where Archer speaks into a translator if my memory serves. just like Kirk in Undiscovered Country

they're not even pretending they're in the prime universe any more 

ffs I just unpaused it and Kol goes "all I see is another attempt to rob us of our Klingon identity"

what

Michael: "it's proof of our desire to communicate"

IT'S A TRANSLATOR! IT'S A NECESSARY PART OF ANY SPACEFARING RACE! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!!! 

he's now speaking English btw so doesn’t that make his whole argument moot?

Kol has Georgiou's badge. blah blah she's telling him off for having no honour, explains she was here when T'Kuvma fell and Kol stole his ship, I don't even fucking care any more it's just so bad

back to Tyler and the Admiral (who can't move her legs btw) she's trying to shoot them, and telling off Tyler for not getting up to help???? 

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh looooooord a flashback to him kissing Michael from last ep broke him out of his shock! FUCK OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

back to Michael facing off against Kol. she's now demanding he fight her

.................

where is the Discovery during this??????

are they still jumping around?

WHY DOES NO ONE CARE

THEY ARE LITERALLY STANDING AROUND WATCHING THEM FIGHT NOW

THE CREW IS JUST STANDING THERE

WATCHING

YOU'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A BATTLE

I CAN'T EVEN SHINy

eah, she got knocked down, gets back up ... and we cut back to Disco jumping and a montage of them jumping, about to do the last one

which you wouldn't know was happening based on the KLINGON BRIDGE

5 mins to analyse data. LOL Lorca just asked 'why aren't they firing?' when they were sitting around after the last jump

BECAUSE THEY'RE WATCHING A FIGHT ON THEIR BRIDGE

BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT KLINGONS DO IN THIS RIDICULOUS ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

OH LORD the camera is swirling around during the fight. 

stop

moving

ugh making me sick so I'm gonna look at the chat window

looks like she stabbed him

LOL they're beaming them out of there. L'Rell just jumped onto Tyler when they transported them off. Michael stole the badge from Kol, did a dramatic jump off the balcony that's on this stupid bridge, and was beamed off

Saru just told Lorca that they also beamed on the Admiral, and his face is like OH SHIT BUT I LEFT HER FOR DEAD

this has been .... the most un-tense. un-dramatic battle

they just blew up the Klingon ship

why they couldn't have beamed something over there and done this IDK

there's lotsa dramatic stares between Michael and Lorca, Tyler, Saru, as the ship explodes .... slow mo of the dramatic looks .... and epic choir music .... and it was the most un-dramatic thing I've ever seen

they had to do all these dramatic effects and music to make it seem exciting

apparently the Vulcan Admiral is totally cool with Lorca disobeying a direct order?

they want Disco to return to Starbase to award Lorca the Legion of Honour

.................

I'm not even surprised at this point

Michael has come to visit Tyler in his quarters. they're having an emotional talk about how he puts on a facade that he's fine

WAIT WHAT

Michael: "but when you saw that Klingon .... who is she to you?"

WHAT, HE LITERALLY WENT INTO SHOCK. WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK SHE IS MICHAEL

Tyler: "I think you already know" NO SHIT

omg they're talking about this and it's so awkward

this is the ONLY genuine part of the whole fucking show

how have they actually managed to write something REAL? within the rest of this garbage?

I still think he's Voq and his memories were just erased

oh lord they ruined it now: "you deserve to live in peace", him: "I've found peace, right here," and then they kiss

like god way to ruin it

now we're back to Stamets who is looking out of it. Lorca is saying they wanted to give him a medal, but he told them to give it to Stamets, GOOD! finally he's being decent! 

huh Lorca then just said there are more Klingons on the way, hell bent on revenge, and he wishes they could stay and fight ... are they actually gonna send any other ships to deal with that???? 

LOL

Stamets is saying they'll do one more jump to get the crew back to safety

HERE WE GO

GUARANTEE THEY'RE ABOUT TO GO VOYAGER ON US

Stamets is saying one more jump and he's done with it "because I need Starfleet's best doctors to examine my condition and figure out what's been happening to me" and Lorca is all ' ..... okay I guess' 

he looks SO reluctant

ugh, flashbacks of Tyler and L'Rell

do we really need to see this

WERE THOSE KLINGON BOOBS

ffs I miss PG Star Trek

he woke up from his nightmare and has gone to see L'Rell in the brig

"what did you do to me?" "do not worry, I will never let them hurt you"??? huh

"soon"

yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah guarantee he's Voq

awww Stamets and Doc finally got to kiss

it's so predictable

even if I hadn't heard they were gonna get stranded

watching this makes it so obvious

oooooooooooh

LORCA ENTERED THE COORDINATES "let's go home"

yeah he's from the Mirror U

Stamets just screamed when it activated. they jumped. they are totes going to the Mirror U

Stamets collapsed, his eyes are going funny

yep, they're unable to confirm their position

LOL

predictions for the next half: they're in the mirror universe, Tyler will be revealed to be Voq 

Boy am I glad that’s over until January!