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rachaelswrites · 3 years ago

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Stabbed in the Back

Tom Holland x Sister!reader

Word Count: 1,143

Requested By: Anonymous

Hey! I want to request a one shot with holland!reader being stood up by her “friends” or someone and so Tom comes to the rescue

A/N: Reader is about 14 in this

Since there was a school break coming up, several of your friends decided that your group should hang out before then. There would be two weeks before either of you would see each other since you would all be out of town or busy with family and other things. You were excited to have a whole day to spend time with your friends. Between school and extracurriculars, there wasn’t a lot of time for you guys to hang out.

The plan was for everyone to meet up at the shopping center food court for lunch, and then you would all shop, then go to the arcade across the street. Since Tom was off of work for a while, he offered to drop you off there.

“Have fun Y/n/n!” he called as you climbed out of his car, “Be safe!”

“Always!” you called back, waving goodbye and going to the doors. It was cold so you stepped inside and found a bench to sit on while you waited for your other friends. You were a bit early so it wasn’t strange that you were the only one here.

After about five minutes, you checked your phone to see where everyone was, “You all on your way?” you texted.

A few seconds later, one of the guys in your group, John, responded, “Will be soon.”

You sent a thumbs up in response and continued waiting for the others. Another ten minutes passed and no one else had shown up. Sure your friends were notorious for being later but they would always let you know beforehand. You still didn’t think anything of it so you waited another twenty minutes before you got worried.

You texted the group chat again but instead of a response, you got nothing. All five other people in the chat had read your message but chose to ignore you. You still made up excuses for them in your head. Maybe they were driving and couldn’t respond or maybe they were already here and didn’t see the point in telling you something you’d find out in seconds.

To test your previous theory, you walked around the center a bit seeing if you got the meeting location wrong. You didn’t see any of them so you went back to the bench but nobody was there either. No response to your earlier text either.

You decided to check your friend’s social media to see if something there told you what happened. You first went to John’s story since he was always active online. He had posted a photo of him and another one of your friends, Juliana with him. That wasn’t strange since the two of them lived close to each other and often carpooled together. You then checked Laura’s story and that’s when you realized what happened.

Instead of meeting you at the shopping center, they were all meeting up at the movie theater. Laura had posted a video of them laughing and talking in line for snacks and then a photo of all of them in their seats, 3D glasses on.

You could feel your heart plunge into your stomach at the sight. You knew you weren’t exactly the favorite friend but you didn’t realize they would go so far as to stand you up. They were always super nice to you and you never got the vibe they didn’t want you there.

You were starting to panic at the realization that you were now alone here and you no longer had any friends to come and get you. You were told you could get a ride from John after you all finished but clearly that wasn’t happening anymore. Paddy was hanging out with his friends and you weren’t sure what the twins were doing. Tom was probably enjoying having a quiet, empty house to do what he wanted so you didn’t want to call him but you also didn’t want to stay here forever.

You clicked on Tom’s contact and waited for him to pick up, “Tom?” you asked when you heard the line click.

“Having fun?” he asked, “Getting into trouble?” He seemed in a good, joking mood. He wouldn’t be once you told him what happened. He was always protective of you, especially when it came to friends.

“Kind of. Can you come and get me?” you asked.

Now Tom was concerned, “What happened?” he asked, already on the hunt for his keys, “Is everything okay?”

You shook your head even though he couldn’t see you, “No one else showed up,” you were trying hard to hold back tears but saying it aloud hurt a lot more, which Tom could tell, “They’re all at the movies. Without me.”

“Oh bubs,” your brother said, his heart breaking for you. He could you now, trying not to cry in front of him, “Hey hey it’s okay Y/n. I’ll come and get you.”

“Thanks,” you mumbled, “I’m right where you dropped me off.”

~~~~~

Tom drove as fast as he could without getting in trouble and made it to the shopping center in record time. He would deal with the lecture from your parent’s later. His only focus now was on his little sister.

You spotted his car pull up to the curb and you went outside and into the car as quickly as possible.

“Y/n,” Tom started but you shook your head, cutting him off. You weren’t in the mood to talk. You didn’t want to ever bring it up again but you knew Tom would make you get it off your chest.

Once home, you tried to go straight up to your room but your brother stopped you, “Y/n come here,” he said, gently grabbing your arm, “Just talk to me for a little bit? I want to make sure you’re okay.”

You turned to face him and shrugged, “I’m okay. I just feel really crappy. I thought they were my friends.”

“I know,” he said, pulling you into a hug, “But listen, there will be lots of people you meet who will be better than them. I never liked any of those kids in the first place.”

You shrugged again.

“Is all you’re going to do is shrug at me? Cause that’s lame,” he responded.

“Like I said, I don’t really want to talk,” you said.

“Okay then,” Tom said, thinking for a second, “We could play a board game? Or we could watch a movie? Maybe you can read a book and I can just keep you company? Any of those sound good?”

“A movie,” you said, “But not a sad one. I don’t want to cry or be reminded of my predicament.”

“I can arrange that,” Tom said. He shooed you off to the living room to set up the couch and tv while he grabbed snacks for the two of you to enjoy.

Taglist

@ssebstann @peachyprincessss @emmy-writes-sometimes @dudele @prentisswrites @laura-naruto-fan1998 @multifamdomfan12 @aquariuslavenderhoney @jjmybeloved @vxidsti1es @waxingmoonwrites @benbarnesbussy @hallecarey1 @freds-slut @ssa-uglywhore27 @czlypso (for some reason I can’t tag you) @sweetpeterparker @spiritualchange @im-in-love-with-pizza-bites @llpovi @bunnyweasley23 @mrchiipchrome

Marvel

@lonely-dead-poets @coffeeandbooksaddict @markhyucksmells

#x teen!reader #x sister!reader #tom holland x teen!reader #tom holland x y/n #tom holland x sister!reader #tom holland

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didanawisgi · 4 years ago

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“If you've ever seen a petunia with artfully variegated petals, then you've seen transposons at work. The flower's showy color patterns are due to transposable elements, or DNA sequences that can move locations within a genome. Yet when it comes to transposons' effects on humans, the results might not be as lovely or desirable.

As researchers learn more about these so-called mobile genetic elements, they've found increasing evidence that transposons influence and even promote aging and age-related diseases like cancer as well as neurogenerative and autoimmune disorders, says John Sedivy, a professor of biology and director of the Center on the Biology of Aging at Brown. Sedivy is the corresponding author of a new review article in Nature that discusses the latest thinking and research around transposons.

"Let's put it this way: These things can be pretty dangerous," said Sedivy. "If they are uncontrolled, and there are many examples of that, transposons can have profound consequences on most forms of life that we know of."

Since the dawn of life, the researchers noted, transposons have coevolved with their host genomes, but it's been more of a competitive existence than a peaceful one, earning them the nicknames of "junk DNA" and "molecular parasites." Transposons were first discovered in corn by the Nobel prize-winning geneticist Barbara McClintock in the 1940s, who also found that depending on where they inserted into a chromosome, they could reversibly alter the expression of other genes.

It is now quite apparent that the genomes of virtually all organisms, including humans, contain repetitive sequences generated by the activity of transposons. When these elements move from one chromosome or part of a chromosome to another, they amplify and increase their presence in genomes, sometimes to dramatic levels. According to Sedivy, "about half of the human genome is due to the activity of these molecular parasites." Their unregulated activity can have long-term benefits by increasing genetic diversity in organisms, but in most cases the chaos degrades cell function, such as by disrupting useful genes.

Most of what is known about transposons, said Sedivy, comes from genome sequence data that shows their activity in the germline, or throughout successive generations of an organism. However, recent research, including from Sedivy and other scientists at Brown, has revealed a wealth of information on transposon activity during the lifetime of a single individual, as well.

In an interview, Sedivy discussed the mechanisms driving transposons, how their activity influences and promotes age-related tissue degeneration and disease—and what can be done to fight back.

Q. Transposons are mobile genetic elements. How and why do they move?

There are two main groups: 'DNA transposons' move using a DNA intermediate in a 'cut and paste' mechanism, and retrotransposons move using a 'copy and paste' mechanism that involves an RNA intermediate. Thirty five percent of the human genome is comprised of retrotransposon DNA sequences. The reason they move is to survive; it allows them to relocate to and increase their presence in their hosts. You can think of transposons as viruses —there are some viruses that are, in fact, transposable elements. HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is a perfect example because it uses the retrotransposition mechanism to insert itself into the genome, and then lets the host cell do the replication for it. This means that unless you kill all the cells that HIV has infected, you can't get rid of it. That's what retrotransposons do, too. They live in the genome, including the germline so that eggs and sperm carry these genetic elements and pass them along to future generations.

Q. Scientists have known about these rogue genetic elements for awhile, but transposons are an increasingly important area of study. You are the principal investigator of a collaborative project funded by the National Institutes of Health to examine retrotransposon activity. In addition, the NIH has recently issued a call for grant applications to further explore how this activity contributes to aging and Alzheimer's. What caused this renewal in interest?

Transposons have been studied quite extensively, one important impact in medicine being their role in propagating antibiotic-resistance genes in bacteria. The level of activity in an individual human body, over a single lifetime, was thought to be quite low and of minimal consequence. It's now become quite obvious that's not the full story.

Q. What role to transposons play in the aging process?

First of all, it's important to realize that aging is not an active process. While it might seem that you're programmed to deteriorate, aging is in fact a successive sequence of failures. Cellular processes and mechanisms become more error-prone over time. Cancer, for example, is a disease of aging because at some point, a fatal error is committed which then propagates and leads to disease. As biologists who study aging, we applied the error and failure theory to retrotransposable elements – and discovered that's exactly what was happening. It's now widely appreciated that over a lifespan, these elements become more active in somatic tissues—there's very good evidence that this is happening. There are multiple surveillance mechanisms that our cells use to keep these elements under control and suppress their activity; several layers of active defense that are necessary to keep the retrotransposons under wraps, so to speak. It appears that aging, or senescent, cells lose some of their ability to control the activity of retrotransposons. The defense mechanisms no longer work as well.

Q. What is the connection between retrotransposons and Alzheimer's?

The aging brain of a person with Alzheimer's already shows a significant amount of damage. There's also reasonably good evidence that the brain, for some reason, is a particularly permissive site for retrotransposon activity, so the retrotransposons can basically have a field day in that tissue because there's very little that can stop them. So they promote further damage. This is a major topic in our recent review article in Nature. The question becomes: What can be done to limit the activity of these elements?

Q. What has your research shown about pharmaceutical interventions for retrotransposon activity in the brain?

The first class of HIV/AIDS drugs, called reverse transcriptase inhibitors, are effective against retrotransposons in humans. As I mentioned earlier, HIV is actually a retrotransposon. The key enzyme that HIV uses to replicate, its reverse transcriptase, is the same enzyme that all other retrotransposons use—it's an integral part of their life cycle. Now, even though these enzymes are evolutionarily related, that doesn't necessarily mean that a drug against one will work against the other. But we discovered that a small subset of HIV/AIDS reverse transcriptase inhibitors are actually quite effective against an important class of retrotransposons called LINE-1. In a paper published in 2019 in Nature, we found that the generic HIV drug lamivudine significantly reduced age-related inflammation and other signs of aging in mice. The next step would be to look at the effects in humans.

Q. Can you talk about the Alzheimer's clinical trial you are working on with Dr. Stephen Salloway, associate director for the Brown Center for Alzheimer's Disease Research?

I work on the basic science side, looking at the cellular and molecular processes, and Stephen Salloway is working on the clinical side, testing interventions with patients. We are currently involved in a randomized, double-blind clinical trial to test the effects of a daily oral dose of an HIV retroviral drug on participants with mild dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. The drug, emtricitabine, is also a reverse transcriptase inhibitor—it's a newer generation of the same class of drugs as lamivudine, and shows better tolerability and fewer side effects in humans. Because this is a repurposing trial—using a drug for a purpose other than what it's been prescribed for—the first thing that needs to be addressed is safety. This drug is approved and is currently being used to treat HIV/AIDS in millions of people, but safety and tolerability need to be tested in a geriatric population with mild dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. That's the primary objective of this trial, which we'll be starting at Butler Hospital very soon.

Q. In which other diseases or conditions can retrotransposons be implicated?

The body's immune system recognizes retrotransposons as viruses and mounts an immune response. This immune response is inappropriate, given that retrotransposons are part of our genomes, and there is good evidence that retrotransposons are linked to autoimmune diseases. A pro-inflammatory role of retrotransposons has been noted in rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, erythematosus (SLE) and Sjogren's syndrome.

Q. Where is the research headed?

As we noted in the review article, much work remains to be done on the basic biology side to understand the mechanisms and consequences of retrotransposon activation in people. We also made the point that there is also a need for a more holistic view of how aging mechanisms contribute to disease—and vice versa. We know a fair amount about retrotransposon activation in senescent cells, but much less about the extent and mechanism of activation in most of the mature cells in our bodies, such as neurons or myocytes. As for potential therapy, nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors have shown early promise, and there is hope that these can be repurposed for Alzheimer's and dementia as well as other conditions. It's an exciting time to be working in this field.

More information: Vera Gorbunova et al, The role of retrotransposable elements in ageing and age-associated diseases,Nature (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03542-y Journal information: Nature

#retrotransposons #LINE-1 #reverse transcription #parasite eve #epigenetics #genetics #family medicine #fav #Aging #anti-aging #print this off later

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therealsaintscully · 5 years ago

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My list of X-Files inspired BBC Sherlock fic prompts

I recently finished reading @88thparallel‘s fabulous “Written in Ashes”, a BBC Sherlock fic inspired by the X-Files episode Demons. I’m a huge X-Files fan myself, and the idea of adapting an XF story into a Sherlock one sent me down a rabbit hole. I decided to compose a list of ideas, all up for grabs, for X-Files plots that can be adapted in interesting ways to a BBC Sherlock casefics.

Below you’ll find a list of X-Files episode with their original description, and some suggestions based on my knowledge of the two shows of what makes the plot an interesting one to write. As I mentioned, these ideas are PROMPTS, suggestions - feel free to write them. In fact it’ll be my honor! Let me know if and when you do (I might even create a collection for them in AO3).

Ice (1x07) - Mulder and Scully investigate the death of an Alaskan research team. Isolated and alone, the agents and their accompanying team discover the existence of extraterrestrial parasitic organisms that drive their hosts into impulsive fits of rage. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: extreme nature adventures (mountains, snow, remote research facilities); isolated together with strangers in a distant location (Ice was supposed to be a bottle episode); a lot of suspense as Mulder and Scully’s trust in each other is put to the test (a handgun showdown), physical inspections rife with sexual tension, ooo!

Darkness Falls (1x19) - Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate when a team of loggers disappear without a trace. Initially suspecting eco-terrorism, the agents find themselves trapped by a seemingly ancient menace lurking in the woods. According to Wikipedia, “Chris Carter was inspired to write this episode based on an interest in dendrochronology (sic? that’s how it’s spelled in wikipedia), a subject that involves analyzing annual growth rings found in non-tropical tree species.” An interesting topic to develop! Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: Just like in Ice, opportunity to write magnificent nature descriptions; also like in Ice, Mulder and Scully have to fend to themselves against the ‘others’; wonderful quotes such as “Rugged manly-men. In the full bloom of their manhood.” and “Come on, Scully. It'll be a nice trip to the forest." A Three Garridebs moment could work here!

Pusher (3x17) - Ah, Pusher. An early Vince Gilligan classic! Mulder and Scully’s assistance is requested for a case involving a man, who goes by the pseudonym "Pusher", seemingly capable of bending people to his will. The suspect uses his mysterious abilities to manipulate Mulder into a dangerous end game. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: Many parallels can be found between Modell and Eurus and or Moriarty; the game of cat and mouse in hopes of luring Mulder as the end game is quite similar to the TFP/TGG; the final game of Russian roulette with Mulder at the end is a classic MSR scene which could be lovely to write for John and Sherlock (Gillian is amazing with that One Tear™ while she threatens Modell); an opportunity to instill a fear of a very specific shade of blue in your readers; a chance of a sequel, since Modell returns with a vengeance in Kitsunegari.

Jose Chung's From Outer Space (3X20) - Mulder and Scully hear, and promptly investigate, a story about an alien abduction of two teenagers. Each witness provides a different version of the same facts. Within the episode, a thriller novelist, Jose Chung, writes a book about the incident. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: Humor! Lots and lots self-aware, meta-type inner-jokes humor as an observant book writer describes Mulder/Sherlock’s many weird traits.

Avatar (3x21) - Assistant Director Walter Skinner is accused of murdering a prostitute, Mulder and Scully investigate to determine the truth behind what happened. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: A fine chance to turn Skinner into Sholto or one of John’s other army friends (Skinner discusses trauma from his days in Vietnam in this episode, which could be adapted to Afghanistan). John Asks for Sherlock’s help on behalf of Sholto/said friend and there’s a thrilling prospect of some good old jealousy :) *After writing this I kinda fell in love with this idea and I might attempt writing this, but I’m absolutely not claiming this exclusively! If you like the idea go ahead!

Paper Hearts (4X08) - Another Vince Gilligan episode, my go-to one these days for when I miss the show and need a good dose of Mulder and Scully. I can go on and on about why I love this episode but I’ll spare you from that right now ;) Mulder and Scully find that a child killer who Mulder had helped to apprehend several years earlier had claimed more victims than he had confessed to; and in the resulting investigation, learn that the killer is now claiming to have killed Mulder's sister Samantha. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: The Alice in Wonderland theme in the episode is somewhat reminiscent of the Hansel and Gretel theme from TRF so Moriarty could be one way to go; another way to go is have Eurus as a villain in a TFP plot fix-it (if you find the Sherrinford plot exaggerated), with Sherlock’s hope of finding Victor’s body by the end of the game.

Zero Sum (4x21) - In the episode, a case Mulder is asked to investigate is covertly covered up by the agents' boss Walter Skinner, who has made a sinister bargain with The Smoking Man. Scully is missing in this episode (Mulder cites her cancer treatments; Gillian Anderson was filming something else at the time). Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: A wonderful opportunity for a Lestrade-as-Skinner story! (and you’re given a fine chance to write a Lestade naked with nothing but pants situation); Mulder is a bit lost without Scully in this episode so that’s added background Johnlock angst; the story can happen when John is away, either during his honeymoon or after Mary dies.

The Pine Bluff Variant (5x18) - This is an underrated episode which I quite like, personally. Scully grows suspicious of Mulder when she thinks he may be helping a terrorist organization. Scully begins to wonder if he is now a traitor to the FBI. It is eventually revealed that Mulder is working as a mole in the group, and he is trying to stop them before they are able to use a biological weapon—that may have been created by members of the U.S. government—which causes rapid degeneration of human flesh. Cool plot points you might enjoy: alternating POVs between Sherlock and John; a lot of tension between John and Sherlock while John is suspicious; Mycroft recruiting Sherlock to appear as a traitor.

Triangle (6x03) - What can I possibly say about Triangle that hadn’t been said before? Cool plot points you might enjoy: An AU-within-AU opportunity - a chance for John and Sherlock to meet in a WW2 era, saved by rebel-Nazi Lestrade, Sherlock’s irregulars are The Lone Gunmen, a kiss, a punch, “You’re my one in five billion” (remember when there 5 billion people on this planet?) :) If you do write this, please make sure present John and past John pass each other by and get a strange, tingling sensation as a result! It’s one of my favorite scenes in the entire show.

Dreamland I & II (6x04 and 6x05) - Mulder and Scully visit Area 51. But when the agents witness the flight of a mysterious craft, Mulder and a member of the Men in Black switch bodies, unbeknownst to the others. In part two, Scully begins to suspect that her partner's strange behavior is more than it appears to be, while Mulder fights to return his life to normal before it is too late. Cool plot points you might enjoy: Humor, humor and more humor. Mostly Morris Fletcher trying to bed John (=Scully) who promptly pulls a gun on him. That should be an awesome scene to write in and of itself. And let’s not forget “Lately, for lunch, you've been having this six-ounce cup of yogurt, plain yogurt, into which you stir bee pollen because you're on a bee pollen kick even though I tell you you're a doctor and you should know better.“ as well as “I’d kiss you if you weren’t so damn ugly.”

Tithonus (6x09) - Another underrated episode. I think it deals with the theme of death’s inevitability rather beautifully. Scully learns that she, but not Mulder, is being given a chance to prove her worth at the FBI, and—paired with a new partner—she investigates a crime scene photographer with an uncanny knack for arriving just in time to see his victims' final moments. What she does not expect, however, is for Death to play a role himself. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: John exploring on his own, for one reason or another, attached to another investigator (things happen!); this episode further explores a theory referred throughout the show since Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose, that Dana Scully is immortal (she seems to avoid death in this episode as well). It’s an Appointment in Samarra sort of story.

Monday (6x15) - Mulder and Scully are stuck in a deadly time loop. It’s a story that writes itself! Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: Sherlock or John having a really bad morning, over and over again.

Alpha (6x16) - Mulder and Scully investigate several killings blamed on an Asian dog called the Wanshang Dhole, thought to be extinct. Mulder and Scully join an obstinate Sheriff, a seemingly eccentric hunter, and a reclusive canine expert to find it. However, there is more mystery to the expert than meets the eye. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: I enjoy this episode because it has some gentle but obvious MSR moments. Scully is suspicious (and low-key jealous) of Karin Berquist’s involvement in the case and it colors her opinion of the investigation. A key quote in this episode, preformed softly and beautifully by Gillian, is: “She's enamored of you Mulder. Don't underestimate a woman. They can be tricksters, too.”

The Unnatural (6x17) - This is a weird ass episode, let’s admit it. This is DD’s love story to baseball and it’s silly and sometimes boring/slow. BUT, it has lovely MRS moments. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: The structure of story within a story (Mulder retells his time spent with Arthur Dales who tells him the story of Josh Exley) is interesting enough. The opening and closing scenes are lovely as well of course!

X-Cops (7x12) - Mulder and Scully are interviewed for the Fox reality television program Cops during an X-Files investigation. Mulder, hunting what he believes to be a werewolf, discovers that the monster terrorizing people instead feeds on fear. While Mulder embraces the publicity of Cops, Scully is more uncomfortable about appearing on national television. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: It’s your chance to write a Sherlock crossver fic about an X-Files crossover episode. If that’s not cool, I don’t no what is.

Hollywood A.D. (7x18) - Let’s admit it, Hollywood A.D is not a good episode, as funny as it is. This episode was one of the first signs the show had lost its edge, possibly because they thought this would be their truly-this-time last season. However, it IS funny and gave rise to fans claims that by this point, Mulder and Scully were Definitely Sleeping Together. Wayne Federman, an entrepreneurial Hollywood producer and college friend of Walter Skinner picks up the idea for a film based on the X-Files, however Mulder and Scully find that the level of realism in their fictional portrayal is somewhat questionable. Meanwhile, during the filming of the movie, Mulder and Scully research the mysterious "Lazarus Bowl", an artifact that supposedly has the exact words that Jesus Christ spoke to raise Lazarus from the dead recorded on its surface. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: Lots of inner-jokes and crack humor, many fluffy moments, the chance to imagine who’ll play Lestrade, Sherlock and John in a BBC Film, Lazarus could refer to The Fall(!), which could be the plot to said film.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe - Mulder and Scully have both left the FBI, but when an FBI agent is mysteriously kidnapped, and a former priest who has been convicted of being a child molester claims to be experiencing psychic visions of the endangered agent, they reluctantly accept the FBI's request for their paranormal expertise. I know, I know. Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t like it either at first, but a) compared to the revival seasons, it’s not that bad and b) in terms of established relationship angst, it’s a fucking goldmine. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: A chance to write a post-recent-retirement fic for Sherlock and John, with a lot of tension in their established relationship based around John’s reluctance to return to their lives as investigators. IWTB has quotes like “This isn't my life anymore, Mulder. I'm done chasing monsters in the dark.” and “This stubbornness of yours, it's why I fell in love with you.” So there! Don’t dismiss the idea so quickly!

Wow, this turned out longer than I expected! I hope you liked them, and even if you don’t write anything - I definitely enjoyed this exercise.

My finished fics are ready to be read on AO3 :)

#bbc sherlock #sherlock fic #sherlock fic prompts #x-files #the x files #sherlock/x-files crossovers #john watson #sherlock holmes #dana scully #fox mulder

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and-then-there-were-n0ne · 5 years ago

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People might object that algorithms could never make important decisions for us, because important decisions usually involve an ethical dimension, and algorithms don’t understand ethics. Yet there is no reason to assume that algorithms won’t be able to outperform the average human even in ethics. Already today, as devices like smartphones and autonomous vehicles undertake decisions that used to be a human monopoly, they start to grapple with the same kind of ethical problems that have bedevilled humans for millennia.

For example, suppose two kids chasing a ball jump right in front of a self-driving car. Based on its lightning calculations, the algorithm driving the car concludes that the only way to avoid hitting the two kids is to swerve into the opposite lane, and risk colliding with an oncoming truck. The algorithm calculates that in such a case there is a 70 percent chance that the owner of the car - who is fast asleep in the back seat - would be killed. What should the algorithm do?

Philosophers have been arguing about such ‘trolley problems' for millennia (they are called 'trolley problems’ because the textbook examples in modern philosophical debates refer to a runaway trolley car racing down a railway track, rather than to a self-driving car).“ Up until now, these arguments have had embarrassingly little impact on actual behaviour, because in times of crisis humans all too often forget about their philosophical views and follow their emotions and gut instincts instead. One of the nastiest experiments in the history of the social sciences was conducted in December 1970 on a group of Students at the Princeton Theological Seminary, who were training to become ministers in the Presbyterian Church. Each student was asked to hurry to a distant lecture hall, and there give a talk on the Good Samaritan parable, which tells how a Jew travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho was robbed and beaten by criminals, who then left him to die by the side of the road. After some time a priest and a Levite passed nearby, but both ignored the man. In contrast, a Samaritan - a member of a sect much despised by the Jews - stopped when he saw the victim, took care of him, and saved his life. The moral of the parable is that people’s merit should be judged by their actual behaviour, rather than by their religious affiliation.

The eager young seminarians rushed to the lecture hall, contemplating on the way how best to explain the moral of the Good Samaritan parable. But the experimenters planted in their path a shabbily dressed person, who was sitting slumped in a doorway with his head down and his eyes closed. As each unsuspecting seminarian was hurrying past, the 'victim’ coughed and groaned pitifully. Most seminarians did not even stop to inquire what was wrong with the man, let alone offer any help. The emotional stress created by the need to hurry to the lecture hall trumped their moral obligation to help strangers in distress.

Human emotions trump philosophical theories in countless other situations. This makes the ethical and philosophical history of the world a rather depressing rale of wonderful ideals and less than ideal behaviour. How many Christians actually turn the other cheek, how many Buddhists actually rise above egoistic obsessions, and how many Jews actually love their neighbours as themselves? That’s just the way natural selection has shaped Homo sapiens. Like all mammals, Homo sapiens uses emotions to quickly make life and death decisions. We have inherited our anger, our fear and our lust from millions of ancestors, all of whom passed the most rigorous quality control tests of natural selection.

Unfortunately, what was good for survival and reproduction in the African savannah a million years ago does not necessarily make for responsible behaviour on twenty-first-century motorways. Distracted, angry and anxious human drivers kill more than a million people in traffic accidents every year. We can send all our philosophers, prophets and priests to preach ethics to these drivers - but on the road, mammalian emotions and savannah instincts will still take over. Consequently, seminarians in a rush will ignore people in distress, and drivers in a crisis will run over hapless pedestrians.

This disjunction between the seminary and the road is one of the biggest practical problems in ethics. Immanuel Kant, John Swart Mill and John Rawls can sit in some cosy university hall and discuss theoretical problems in ethics for days - but would their conclusions actually be implemented by stressed-out drivers caught in a split-second emergency? Perhaps Michael Schumacher - the Formula One champion who is sometimes hailed as the best driver in history - had the ability to think about philosophy while racing a car; but most of us aren’t Schumacher.

Computer algorithms, however, have not been shaped by natural selection, and they have neither emotions nor gut instincts. Hence in moments of crisis they could follow ethical guidelines much better than humans - provided we find a way to code ethics in precise numbers and statistics. If we teach Kant, Mill and Rawls to write code, they can carefully program the self-driving car in their cosy laboratory, and be certain that the car will follow their commandments on the highway. In effect, every car will be driven by Michael Schumacher and Immanuel Kant rolled into one.

Thus if you program a self-driving car to stop and help strangers in distress, it will do so come hell or high water (unless, of course, you insert an exception clause for infernal or high-water scenarios). Similarly, if your self-driving car is programmed to swerve to the opposite lane in order to save the two kids in its path, you can bet your life this is exactly what it will do. Which means that when designing their self-driving car, Toyota or Tesla will be transforming a theoretical problem in the philosophy of ethics into a practical problem of engineering.

Granted, the philosophical algorithms will never be perfect. Mistakes will still happen, resulting in injuries, deaths and extremely complicated lawsuits. (For the first time in history, you might be able to sue a philosopher for the unfortunate results of his or her theories, because for the first time in history you could prove a direct causal link between philosophical ideas and real-life events.) However, in order to take over from human drivers, the algorithms won’t have to be perfect. They will just have to be better than the humans. Given that human drivers kill more than a million people each year, that isn’t such a tall order. When all is said and done, would you rather the car next to you was driven by a drunk teenager, or by the Schumacher-Kant team?

The same logic is true not just of driving, but of many other situations. Take for example job applications. In the twenty-first century, the decision whether to hire somebody for a job will increasingly be made by algorithms. We cannot rely on the machine to set the relevant ethical standards - humans will still need to do that. But once we decide on an ethical standard in the job market - that it is wrong to discriminate against black people or against women, for example - we can rely on machines to implement and maintain this standard better than humans. A human manager may know and even agree that it is unethical to discriminate against black people and women, but then, when a black woman applies for a job, the manager subconsciously discriminates against her, and decides not to hire her. If we allow a computer to evaluate job applications, and program the computer to completely ignore race and gender, we can be certain that the computer will indeed ignore these factors, because computers don’t have a subconscious. Of course, it won’t be easy to write code for evaluating job applications, and there is always a danger that the engineers will somehow program their own subconscious biases into the software. Yet once we discover such mistakes, it would probably be far easier to debug the software than to rid humans of their racist and misogynist biases.

We saw that the rise of artificial intelligence might push most humans out of the job market - including drivers and traffic police (when rowdy humans are replaced by obedient algorithms, traffic police will be redundant). However, there might be some new openings for philosophers, because their skills - hitherto devoid of much market value - will suddenly be in very high demand. So if you want to study something that will guarantee a good job in the future, maybe philosophy is not such a bad gamble. Of course, philosophers seldom agree on the right course of action. Few 'trolley problems’ have been solved to the satisfaction of all philosophers, and consequentialist thinkers such as John Stuart Mill (who judge actions by consequences) hold quite different opinions to deontologists such as Immanuel Kant (who judge actions by absolute rules). Would Tesla have to actually take a stance on such knotty matters in order to produce a car?

Well, maybeTesla will just leave it to the market. Tesla will produce two models of the self-driving car: the Tesla Altruist and the Tesla Egoist. In an emergency, the Altruist sacrifices its owner to the greater good, whereas the Egoist does everything in its power to save its owner, even if it means killing the two kids. Customers will then be able to buy the car that best fits their favourite philosophical view. If more people buy the Tesla Egoist, you won’t be able to blame Tesla for that. After all. the customer is always right.

This is not a joke. In a pioneering 2015 study people were presented with a hypothetical scenario of a self-driving car about to run over several pedestrians. Most said that in such a case the car should save the pedestrians even at rhe price of killing its owner. When they were then asked whether they personally would buy a car programmed to sacrifice irs owner for the grearet good, most said no. For themselves, they would prefer the Tesla Egoist.

Imagine the situation: you have bought a new car, bur before you can start using it, you must open the settings menu and tick one of several boxes. In case of an accident, do you want the car to sacrifice your life - or to kill the family in the other vehicle? Is this a choice you even want to make? Just think of the arguments you are going to have with your husband about which box to tick.

So maybe the state should intervene to regulate the market, and lay down an ethical code binding all self-driving cars? Some lawmakers will doubtless be thrilled by the opportunity to finally make laws that are always followed to the letter. Other lawmakers may be alarmed by such unprecedented and totalitarian responsibility. After all, throughout history the limitations of law enforcement provided a welcome check on the biases, mistakes and excesses of lawmakers. It was an extremely lucky thing that laws against homosexuality and against blasphemy were only partially enforced. Do we really want a system in which the decisions of fallible politicians become as inexorable as gravity?

- Yuval Noah Harari, The philosophical car in 21 Lessons for the 21st century

#yuval noah harari #21 lessons #21 lessons for the 21st century

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wislewabe1976 · 6 years ago

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United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers

Nobody trusted him. His family guided him to get help. Be that as it may, Timothy Trespas, an out-of-work recording engineer in his mid 40s, was certain he was being stalked, and not by only one individual, yet many them.

He would see the agents, he stated, camouflaged as common individuals, sneaking around his Midtown Manhattan neighborhood. In some cases they chanced upon him and murmured drivel into his ear, he said.

вЂњNow you perceive how it works,вђќ they would say.

At first, Mr. Trespas thought about whether it was all in his mind. At that point he experienced an enormous network of similarly invested individuals on the web who call themselves вђњtargeted individuals,вђќ or T.I.s, who depicted experiencing exactly the equivalent thing.

The gathering was sorted out around the conviction that its individuals are casualties of a rambling scheme to bug a huge number of ordinary Americans with mind-control weapons and multitudes of supposed posse stalkers. The objective, as one posse stalking site put it, is вђњto decimate each part of a focused on individualвђ™s life.вђќ

A developing clan of disturbed minds

Mental wellbeing experts state the account has grabbed hold among a gathering of individuals encountering crazy manifestations that have pained the human personality since days of yore. But now exploited people are interfacing on the web, arranging and opposing medicinal clarifications for whatвђ™s happening to them.

The people group, minimalistically evaluated to surpass 10,000 individuals, has multiplied since 9/11, supported by the web and encouraged by real worries over government observation. An enormous number seem to have whimsical issue or schizophrenia, therapists say.

Yet, the marvel remains basically unresearched.

For the couple of pros who have looked carefully, these people speak to a disturbing improvement throughout the entire existence of psychological instability: a great many debilitated individuals, united together and requesting acknowledgment based on shared paranoias.

They fund-raise, hold mindfulness battles, have worldwide meetings and battle for their causes in courts and legislatures.

Perhaps their greatest triumph came a year ago, when adherents to Richmond, Calif., convinced the City Council to pass a goals restricting space-based weapons that they accept could be utilized for mind control. A comparative campaigning exertion is in progress in Tucson.

An вђecho chamberвђ™ of paranoia

Dr. Lorraine Sheridan, who is co-creator of maybe the main investigation of posse stalking, said the network represents a risk that separates it from different gatherings advancing upsetting thoughts, for example, anorexia or suicide. On those themes, the web teems with therapeutic data and treatment options.

An web scan for вђњgang-stalking,вђќ notwithstanding, turns up page after page of results that see it as truth. вЂњWhatвЂ™s startling for me is that there are no counter locales that attempt and persuade focused on people that they are delusional,вђќ Dr. Sheridan said.

вЂњThey end up in a shut belief system reverberation chamber,вђќ she said.

In instructional tracts on the web, veterans of the development disclose the ropes to rookies:

вђў Do not draw in with the voices in your head.

вђў If your relatives let you know youвђ™re envisioning things, they could be in on it.

вђў вЂњDo not visit a psychiatrist.вђќ

The clan plays hooky and callings, and incorporates legal advisors, warriors, craftsmen and engineers. In Facebook discussions and bring in care groups, they sympathize over the suspicion of their friends and family and offer accounts of dark vans that circle the square or collaborators recruited into the campaign.

ImageA T.I. subgenre has bloomed on Amazon. Left, the front of John Hallвђ™s вЂњGuinea Pigs: Technologies of Control,вђќ and Robert Duncanвђ™s вЂњHow to Tame a Demon.вђќ

They have independently published many digital books, with titles like вЂњTortured in Americaвђќ and вЂњMy Life Changed Forever.вђќ In several YouTube recordings they offer tributes and attempt to report proof of their stalking, notwithstanding going up against clueless strangers.

вЂњThey needed to fundamentally obliterate me, and they did,вђќ a youthful mother in Phoenix says in a single video, holding back tears. She lost guardianship of her girl and was sent to a social wellbeing medical clinic, says the lady, whose name is being retained to secure her protection. вЂњBut I am going to battle back for the remainder of my life.вђќ

She includes, вЂњAnd think about what, Iвђ™m not crazy.вђќ

Dr. Sheridanвђ™s study, composed with Dr. David James, a scientific therapist, inspected 128 instances of revealed group stalking. It discovered every one of the subjects were in all probability delusional.

вЂњOne needs to think about the T.I. wonder regarding individuals with distrustful indications who have hit upon the pack stalking thought as a clarification of what's going on to them,вђќ Dr. James said.

A hodgepodge of scheme theories

Perhaps obviously, the network is partitioned over the shapes of the connivance. Some accept the money related world class is behind it. Others accuse outsiders, their neighbors, Freemasons or some combination.

The movementвђ™s most unmistakable voices, notwithstanding, will in general accept the observation is a piece of a mind-control field test done in anticipation of worldwide mastery. The military foundation, the hypothesis goes, never abandoned the desire of MK Ultra, the C.I.A.вЂ™s scandalous program to control the psyche during the 1950s and вђ™60s.

A driving advocate of that view is an anesthesiologist from San Antonio named John Hall.

In his 2009 book, вЂњA New Breed: Satellite Terrorism in America,вђќ Dr. Corridor gave his own record of being focused on. Specialists dyed his water, he composed, and besieged him with voices making lethal threats.

The book made a sprinkle due to the delivery person: an authorized individual from the restorative foundation who was telling the individuals who feel focused on that therapists were deluding them. A janitor knows as much about the human personality, he wrote.

Dr. Corridor, 51, was welcomed for a meeting on вЂњCoast to Coast AM,вЂќ an intrigue disapproved of radio show situated in California that is said to arrive at a huge number of audience members. From that point forward, he stated, вЂњI had presumably three or 4,000 messages from individuals saying: вЂItвЂ™s transpiring in this state.вђ™ вЂItвЂ™s transpiring in Florida.вђ™ вЂItвЂ™s transpiring in California.вђ™ вђќ

The similitudes of the cases addressed a wide-running effort, he said. вЂњIf the therapists need to state this is schizophrenia or silly issue, thatвђ™s fine,вђќ he said. вЂњBut all of these unfortunate casualties have the equivalent story.вђќ

While Dr. Corridor has confronted examination from the Texas Medical Board over his psychological wellness, he holds his permit. After some time, in any case, numerous other people who recognize as group stalking exploited people end up out of work. They are ridiculed by associates, endured by family. Companions and mates fall away.

A guise for violence

The despair that outcomes has driven some to lash out in violence.

Many in the network, for instance, are persuaded that Aaron Alexis, who executed 12 individuals at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013, was an injured individual. Mr. Alexis, a previous mariner, abandoned a record blaming the Navy for assaulting his mind with вђњextremely low frequencyвђќ electromagnetic waves. In favor of his shotgun were carved the words вђњmy mythical person weapon.вђќ

It was hazy when Myron Mayвђ™s mental pain started, however by the fall of 2014, it had turned out to be excessively. He quit his place of employment as an investigator in New Mexico and made a trip to Florida. There, he recorded a tribute about how posse stalking had destroyed his life.

вЂњAs you can see right now,вђќ he says into the camera, вЂњI am absolutely not crazy.вђќ

Laying out his case, he portrays a scene at a service station where he accepted someone in dull glasses was impersonating his developments. вЂњIt was truly creepy,вђќ he said. вЂњEverything I did, he did.вђќ

Later in the video, he appeals to God for absolution for his future sins. вЂњFather,вЂќ he says, вђњright now I ask that you look down on all the focused on people over the globe. Help them to adapt to this madness.вђќ

On Nov. 20, 2014, Mr. May strolled into a library at Florida State University, where he had graduated in 2005, and shot three individuals, leaving one incapacitated. He challenged the police to slaughter him, at that point discharged toward them before being lethally shot, authorities said. He was 31.

ImageOfficers remaining over the assemblage of Myron May on Nov. 20, 2014, after the taking shots at Florida State University.CreditMark Wallheiser/Associated Press

The lion's share of peopl

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s0meday0neday · 6 years ago

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Don’t Lose Your Head - Outtakes #1

So, on a few occasions I would write nearly a whole chapter for Don’t Lose Your Head, and then slowly realise as I wrote it that I really didn’t want the fic to go in that direction. They’re all just piled up at the bottom of the word document I keep the fic on, so I figured I’d share!

This was a potential chapter where the whole ‘school bullies’ topic from Chapter 7 made a comeback. (if you somehow have no idea what I’m talking about, check out Don’t Lose Your Head, my Breaky fic on ao3: link)

“Brian, darling, when you said you wanted to take the new van for a test ride, this really wasn’t what I had in mind,” Freddie remarked, looking entirely dissatisfied with the whole state of affairs. Brian wasn’t really focused on him, he was more intent on looking out of the window. Seeing that Brian was paying no attention to him, Freddie continued.

“You do understand that just because it’s a bit of a sketchy looking van doesn’t mean we have to act like criminals, yes?” he drawled, leaning over to rest his head on Brian’s shoulder from behind, following his gaze. “And I don’t know that ‘Yes, officer, I was spying on those school children, but it’s okay because one of them’s my boyfriend’ would be met with a smile.”

That prompted a response out of Brian, finally.

“Four more months, and you and Rog won’t be able to make those sorts of jokes anymore. I can’t bloody wait,” he muttered.

“Four more months and perhaps you’ll finally get laid and stop acting so bloody uptight,” Freddie retorted quickly, “Honestly, what are you even looking at? He’s just sitting there. You know he’s going to spot us soon enough, and he’ll be terribly annoyed.”

It was indeed a rather dull view by most people’s standards. Saint George’s Secondary School for Boys had been hastily rebuilt after the war, and it showed in the ugly grey façade of the school’s main building. The gates looked a little newer, but they also looked like prison bars, providing a partially obscured view into the school’s outdoor recreation area. A few benches and a football pitch were all that could be seen from the street, but it was enough of a view for Brian, since John was currently occupying one of said benches.

“We were just in the area, and I’m checking up on him, that’s not weird,” Brian said absent-mindedly, and Freddie scoffed.

“We’re in the area because you drove us here!”

“I just… Look, do you remember that time before Christmas, the guys from his school were in the audience and he was a bit upset by it all?” Brian sighed, shifting to face Freddie, who nodded.

“I thought the two of you sorted that out though?”

“So did I! And I forgot about it a bit, and John didn’t bring it up again. But then I started to think it was strange that he hadn’t, because he’d been so worried about going back in on Monday and he never told me what happened,” Brian said agitatedly, finally letting the worries that had been stewing in his head for the past couple of days come rushing out. “I thought… Maybe if something was up, this would be the way to find out.”

“And what have we observed so far?” Freddie asked, with a slightly more sympathetic tone now.

“Nothing much… But he’s eating lunch alone. That doesn’t seem normal.”

“You have to remember that John’s quite the introvert, I think he likes his alone time,” Freddie reminded him gently.

“I guess,” Brian sighed, slumping forward against the steering wheel, “Maybe I was just being paranoid… But I still feel like-“

Both men jumped when their conversation was interrupted by a sharp rapping of knuckles against the van window, and Brian nearly had a heart attack when he saw who the sound had originated from.

John, who had somehow magically transported out of the school gates, knocked again, looking puzzled and a little bemused. Brian quickly rolled the window down.

“How did you get out?” was the first thing he asked, heart still racing a little at having been caught.

“How did I… What do you mean? I’m a sixth former, I’m allowed to leave at lunchtime,” John replied, sounding increasingly confused, “I thought you knew that. Why else would you come?”

“We were just… in the area,” Brian replied hesitantly. He could tell immediately that John knew that was a lie, but the younger man let it slide, “How’s your day been?”

“Oh, not bad. Not fantastic either. Just average,” John said with a shrug, leaning forward to rest his forearms against the windowsill of the van, “Quite a bit better seeing you here,” he added softly, cheeks flushing when Freddie made some sly comment about flattery.

Before Brian could reply, he noticed John frowning, and shifting away from the window a little, reacting to something out of Brian’s field of vision. He could certainly hear it though.

“Who you talking to, Deacon?” The voice was unfamiliar to Brian, but evidently not to John, who abruptly pulled away from the van, expression shuttering into something carefully blank unreadable. As Brian watched, a pair of boys – both clad in the same uniform as John – stepped out into view, obviously heading in the direction of the school gate but slowing down to address their classmate. John opened his mouth, as if to reply, but closed it again without a word. He looked painfully uncomfortable, even if he wasn’t letting it show on his face.

“Hey,” one of the boys, who Brian quickly marked as the ringleader, called, “I asked you a question.”

Brian wasn’t quite sure in his own mind why he wasn’t doing anything.

“A friend,” John replied, voice so soft Brian could barely make it out, “I was just heading back though.”

He watched, helpless, as John turned to make his way back to the school gates. Watched as one of the boys made some jeering comment as John approached, and the other gave him a jab in the ribs that was played off as amicable, but clearly wasn’t. Watched as a foot was stuck out in John’s path, and the younger man stumbled on it as the pair of boys roared in laughter. John looked so horribly miserable in that moment that Brian finally felt kicked into action.

It seemed Freddie had had the exact same idea, but about five seconds earlier, because he was already out of the van and cursing up a storm.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, you little piss-flaps?”

John swung around, eyes wide and a little horrified as he and the other boys watched Freddie approach, quickly followed by Brian.

“Why don’t you come and try to knock me around like that, hm? What? Not in the mood for it when it’s three against two?” Freddie continued, as Brian made it his mission to get closer to John. Let Freddie do the yelling, he was better at it.

John still looked like a deer caught in headlights. Brian sorely wanted to pull him close, but knew anything like that would have to wait until they were back in the van at the very least. Luckily, that didn’t seem too long away, as Freddie seemed to have scared the bullies off back past the school gates.

“And don’t think I won’t keep to that threat if you lay your grubby paws on Deacy again!” was as much as Brian caught of the end of his volley of threats and insults. He was far more focused on John, who seemed to still be processing what had happened.

“Let’s get back to the van, okay?” Brian suggested, putting a hand on John’s back to guide him back to the other side of the street, and hoping that there were no teachers around to see what was happening.

John put up a token resistance, murmuring something about afternoon classes, but Brian wasn’t having it. He knew John had near-perfect attendance, he could afford to skip a couple of hours.

The drive back was frustrating for Brian. Since Freddie had never bothered to learn to drive, and John hadn’t yet passed his test, Brian was stuck behind the wheel and forced to focus more on the road than on his boyfriend.

Fortunately, Freddie had started to worm himself into the group of people John was relatively comfortable around, and so he filled the journey with outrageous anecdotes and seemingly-innocuous questions that slowly drew John out of the nervous state he was in. By the time they arrived back at the house, John was even smiling a little as Freddie recounted the tale of a particularly terrible gig the band had performed with a different bassist.

Finishing off his story as they stepped over the threshold, Freddie glanced back at the two of them – catching the look Brian sent his way – and smiled. “Well, you two want some alone time, I’m sure. I have some sketches I wanted to finish, so I’ll leave you be,” he said, disappearing into his own bedroom with a wave, and leaving John and Brian alone.

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

As soon as Freddie left, John felt his chest tighten again, anticipating that he was on the verge of having a conversation he really didn’t want to have. He seemed to be having a lot of those lately, but he supposed it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Rather, it was just a result of being so close to Brian, close enough that he couldn’t simply hide things that bothered him and wait for them to go away.

That didn’t stop John from wanting to hide this, though.

It was almost a small comfort that Brian seemed just as uncomfortable as he did, though Brian also seemed quite upset, which John hated to think he had caused. Before John could dwell on that fact too much, though, Brian spoke up.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked.

“Fine,” John replied quickly and, seeing that Brian didn’t seem to believe him, added, “Better than earlier. Thank you… For sticking up for me.”

Brian seemed to accept that answer. “It was more Freddie, I don’t think I did very much,” he said as he led John up the stairs, “Is it okay if we just sit down for a bit? Just… talk, and be honest with eachother.”

It sounded very nice in theory, but John decidedly did not want to talk about the incident Brian and Freddie had intervened in. Talking about it seemed a worst prospect than reliving it. Still, he followed Brian up the stairs, and into his bedroom, nestling up close to Brian when the older man sat on the bed.

“First things first… I think it’s pretty obvious that wasn’t the first time something like that’s happened, right?” Brian started. He sounded like he was enjoying this conversation just as much as John, that is to say, not at all.

John just nodded, fingers plucking at a loose thread on one of the blankets covering Brian’s duvet.

“Is it the same people who came to see us playing a couple of months back?”

Another nod, careful avoidance of eye contact.

“How often has it been happening? Stuff like that, I mean, the tripping and the- the teasing?” Brian asked, arm wrapping around John’s shoulder, a comforting weight.

“Not often. Maybe two or three times a week. We don’t share any classes,” John said. Seeing how Brian didn’t seem at all happy with that answer, he pressed on. “It’s not as bad as you’re thinking, Brian. I can manage it. It was only today I froze because you were there and I felt…” Humiliated. Juvenile. Weak. Helpless. “I knew it would upset you,” he finished awkwardly.

“But I still want to know about this stuff, John. I’d rather be upset than blind to it all,” Brian sighed, “I wish I could do something.”

“Aren’t you the one always saying I’m practically finished with school anyway? It won’t be an issue much longer,” John pointed out.

“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I said that…” Brian muttered, which John latched onto as a good enough way to change the topic.

“What did you have in mind?”

Brian gave him a bemused look, then smiled and shook his head a little. “I had in mind you having a lot more free time,” he began, leaning closer and lowering his voice, “And me taking advantage of that free time to do a lot of things I’ve wanted to do for a while.” And then, just as quickly as the huskier tone had come, it was gone, and Brian drew back a little, “But you’re changing the subject. We need to think of something we’re going to do about this, or I’ll feel like the worst boyfriend in the world.”

John racked his brain for a solution. In all honesty, he really, truly didn’t mind much. What Brian had witnessed was the extent of how bad things got, and John’s main fear – that bigger groups of people would be drawn in and put the spotlight on him – had never come to fruition. Usually, he was perfectly capable of just carrying on his way and ignoring it. It was only Brian’s presence that had caused the issue.

Despite the older man’s assurances, John

At this point, the author realised she didn’t want to go in this direction with the fic, and scrapped the whole chapter without ever proof-reading it even so don’t come at me for typos ;P

#queen #breaky #outtakes #dont lose your head #queen slash

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b34utiful-d1s4st3r-blog · 7 years ago

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Artificial Intelligence Philosophy – AI and Machine Learning

A student will gain an awareness, and discover to judge and also to produce arguments for and against major philosophical problems concerning AI, robotics as well as their relations to human cognition and behavior. A different type of effort at fixing AIs ethics issue is the proliferation of crowdsourced ethics projects, which have the commendable objective of a far more democratic method of science.

To illustrate DJ Patils Code of Ethics for Data Science, which invites the information-science community to lead ideas but doesn't develop in the decades of labor already made by philosophers, historians and sociologists of science. Then there's MITs Moral Machine project, which asks the general public to election on questions for example whether a self-driving vehicle with brake failure must go beyond five destitute people instead of one female physician.

Philosophers call these trolley problems and also have printed a large number of books and papers around the subject in the last half-century. Evaluating the views of professional AI philosophers with individuals of everyone could be eye-opening, as experimental philosophy has frequently proven, but merely ignoring professionals and going for an election rather is irresponsible. We live at a time in which the fundamental knowledge of what it really way to be human is altering. Social networking platforms still redefine our feeling of place and time.

We grapple using these changes once we attempt to define ourselves and our social relationships within an era of constant connectivity. A couple of decades ago, if a person claimed to possess supporters you’d assume they were beginning a cult. Now it’s an expression that 12 year olds use once they discuss Instagram and Twitter. Customers aren't the only ones who're increasingly more demanding, employees too. They would like to choose their professional future as well as their development.

That's the reason new talent management methodologies have started to emerge, as we will have below. Many counter-arguments happen to be made against unpredicted intelligence explosions, focused largely on technical limitations and logic. For instance, sci-fi author Ramez Naam stated within an essay for H+ magazine that a super intelligent mind would want some time and sources to invent humanity-destroying technologies it would need to have fun playing the human economy to acquire what it really needed (for instance, building faster chips requires not only new designs but complicated and costly nick fabrication foundries to construct them.)The determination that the system, just like an atom of polonium218, is or isn't a closed system, obviously, poses difficult epistemic problems, that are compounded within the situation of people, precisely since they're vastly more complicated causal systems.

Furthermore, probabilistic systems need to be distinguished from (what exactly are known as) chaotic systems, that are deterministic systems with acute sensitivity to initial conditions, in which the smallest switch to individuals conditions can result in formerly unpredicted effects. A small improvement in thousands and thousands of lines of code controlling an area probe, for instance, composed of the appearance of just one wrong character, just one misplaced comma, caused Mariner 1, the very first US interplanetary spacecraft, to veer off target after which need to be destroyed. A minimum of some versions of artificial intelligence are attempts not just to model human intelligence, but to create computers and robots that exhibit it: which have ideas, use language, as well as have freedom. Performs this seem sensible? What can it show us about human thinking and awareness? Join John and Ken because they identify the philosophical issues elevated by artificial intelligence. However the nerd-sighted geniuses in our day result in the same mistake. Should you ask a coder what ought to be done to make certain AI does no evil, you are prone to get 1 of 2 solutions, neither being reassuring. Answer No. 1: It is not my problem. I simply construct it, as exemplified lately with a Harvard computer researcher who stated, I’m just an engineer when requested the way a predictive policing tool he developed might be misused. Answer No. 2: Believe me. I’m smart enough to have it right. AI researchers really are a smart bunch, but there is a terrible history of staying away from ethical blunders.

A few of the better-known goof-ups include Google images tagging black people as gorillas, chat bots that become Nazis and racist soap dispensers. The effects can be more serious when biased algorithms are responsible for deciding who ought to be approved for any financial loan, who to employ or admit to college or if to kill a suspect inside a police chase. I can tell how that's already happening. We have pretty efficient satnav systems, which generally take us right places.

Those who have developed with this type of system have grown to be incredibly dependent on navigation by machine. In the event that begins to fail at any time, Id imagine some those who have lately passed their test as motorists would a very find it difficult to use road signs, or memorized routes, or perhaps a conventional map as a means of having in one spot to another. Another recent article within the New You are able to Occasions claimed that academics happen to be asleep in the wheel, departing policy makers who're battling to learn how to regulate AI subject to industry lobbyists.

The content trigger a Twitter storm of replies from philosophers, historians and sociologists of science, angry their decades of underfunded jobs are again being overlooked and erased. Such as the Who’s lower in Whoville, they cried in fear, we’re here! We're here! We're here! We're here!

If policy makers and funding sources listen carefully to individuals’ voices, there are answers on offer. The content concludes that people urgently require an academic institute centered on algorithmic accountability. On Twitter, the articles author, Cathy ONeil, was adamant, there must be several more tenure lines dedicated to it. Individuals both seem like solid ideas. Objection II: A minimum of it might be figured that since current computers (objective evidence suggests) do lack feelings until Data 2. Does arrive (when) we're titled, given computers' insufficient feelings, to deny the low-level and piecemeal high-level intelligent behavior of computers bespeak genuine subjectivity or intelligence. AI lent many concepts without delivering thanks, like ontology, theory of mind, agent based architecture, object oriented design, archetypes and many more. Algorithms tracking our each step and key stroke expose us to dangers more dangerous than impulsively buying anti-wrinkle cream. More and more polarized and radicalized political movements, leaked health data and also the manipulation of elections using harvested Facebook profiles are some of the documented connection between the mass deployments of AI. Something as apparently innocent as discussing your jogging routes online can reveal military secrets.

These cases are simply the beginning. Even our beloved Canadian Tire cash is being repurposed like a surveillance tool for any machine-learning team. Singer didn't think about a. I. s, but his argument shows that the escalator of reason leads societies to greater benevolence no matter species origin. A. I. s will need to strike the escalator of reason must have, simply because they will have to bargain for goods inside a human-dominated economy and they'll face human potential to deal with inappropriate behavior.

The philosopher John Smart argues, if morality and immunity are developmental processes, when they arise inevitably in most intelligent collectives as a kind of positive-sum game, they have to also grow in pressure and extent as each civilizations computational capacity grows.

#ai #artificial intelligence #mit #machine learning #philosophy

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z3norear · 4 years ago

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pertinax--loculos · 5 years ago

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Character Study: Jay (2.1)

[Breaking the second part into two parts of its own, cuz I kinda wanna rework what I wrote for the last two. Additonally, small tweak to the Plan: I’m thinking I’ll probably drop one of the nine prompts I had for each character, to make it an even 4/4 split over the two parts (plus as I’ve been mulling it over it’s basically happened that way naturally anyway lol). CW for swearing, as ever.]

4. Rivals Jay’s position within the Association meant that he was indispensable enough to be able to freelance, at least to an extent. Of course there were jobs he’d never be able to accept – mostly those involving direct competitors – but it was a good enough side hustle, especially because the jobs rarely required more than his equivalent of a mean look. Easy money.

Of course, he was far from the only freelancer in town.

Which resulted in situations like these.

He’d slipped silently into the living room of the guy he was supposed to shake down – some argument, or maybe a debt, Jay was long past asking too many questions – and found a figure poised by the side of the front window. He was well enough concealed that Jay might not have noticed him if it wasn’t for the serendipitous passing of a car, headlights sweeping across the room and throwing the silhouette into sharp relief.

Jay stopped, arranged his face into an easy smirk. “Becker.”

The figure spun around and cursed, colourfully and at length. “Fucking hell,” he finished in a mutter. “How the hell do you always manage to get inside without using a fucking door?”

Jay shrugged as he slinked forward a step. “Trade secret.”

“Right.” Becker had mirrored his forward movement, sliding back a step to maintain the distance between them. He stopped in the slanting light from the street outside; it illuminated him well enough that Jay could see that while his body language remained relaxed, his pale eyes were alert. “So you wanna toss for it?”

Jay’s smirk widened.

He lost the coin toss, which wasn’t great for his reputation, but at least meant that his night was freed up. Plus he got to exit, loudly, through the front door, which was novel in and of itself.

Becker knew as well as he did that it wasn’t the end of it – Becker’s employer would run out of either money or caution sooner rather than later – but neither of them were invested in the tasks beyond the payout. And both of them knew Jay wasn’t one to leave a job unfinished.

But for tonight he’d just revel in the unexpected free time. He ducked into an alley a couple of blocks away, walking around halfway down before he leaned against the wall and fished out his cigarettes. This was territory disputed enough for it to be practically neutral; he wasn’t going to be disturbed by some random dealers.

He was on his third cigarette when he heard footsteps approach. Jay slitted his eyes open just far enough to confirm his suspicion before he tipped his head back against the wall.

Becker drew up a good ten feet away, propping his hip against the skeleton of a long burned-out car. “Got a spare?”

Jay tossed the cigarettes towards him without opening his eyes. “Lemme guess. Appropriately lauded, you truly do live up to your reputation, thank you so much for protecting me, I’m gonna pass your name around to all my friends?”

Becker chuckled around his cigarette. “Usual song and dance.” He made a slight clucking sound, and Jay glanced over to catch the packet as he threw it back. “How pissed d’you reckon they’d be if they found out their safety was predicated on a coin toss?”

“Probably not as pissed as the ones whose delivery of a message is predicated on the same,” Jay said, grinning at him.

Becker ashed his cigarette off to the side, his gaze turning shrewd. “How the hell do you explain to them that you couldn’t do what they asked?”

“What do you mean?”

“Johns.” Becker’s voice was dry. “You gotta know the kinda reputation you have. With a rep like that, I’d imagine all your prospective employers expect you to get the job done.”

Jay raised an eyebrow, letting his smile sharpen into more of a smirk. “Whatever are you talking about?”

“Oh, shut up.” Becker rolled his eyes. “You’re a fucking ghost, Johns. No signs of entry or exit, nothing broken, not so much as a hair out of place unless you want it that way. How do you do all that and then sell a failure to someone who’s paying you?”

“Ah, you gotta factor in failures,” Jay said, glancing down as he tapped the end of his cigarette. “It’s the only way to stop them from asking you to do the impossible. Plus,” – he looked back up to smirk at Becker again – “I gotta leave some work for the rest of you guys.”

Becker’s mouth quirked as he took a drag. “Naw, c’mon. I can get work on my own merits.”

“Only because I’m modulating my reputation,” Jay said gravely.

Becker snorted. “Maybe we should test your theory then. I could totally take you.”

“You fucking wish,” Jay retorted. “Apparently your recollection of our initial encounter has been altered by time. Do we need to refresh your memory?” He flicked his cigarette away and straightened; he didn’t miss the corresponding tension that lanced through Becker’s frame.

“Yeah, no,” he said, eyeing Jay carefully. “Two weeks in the hospital is not something I wanna repeat.”

“See? Not just a pretty face.” Jay flashed his teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I’d better get going. Got some stupid fucking rendezvous I gotta chaperone.”

Becker raised his eyebrows. “Off of Murphy’s? Two am?”

Jay huffed some air out his nose in a half-laugh as he started to turn away. “Guess I’ll see you there.”

“Better me than Wyatt.”

Jay glanced over his shoulder as he walked, his smile more genuine than he normally allowed. “Better you than anybody, really.”

“Don’t forget you still owe me a drink,” Becker called after him.

Jay laughed, loud and deliberate and a little too sincere. “Don’t forget you still owe me your life.”

Becker’s answering laugh trailed him out of the alley.

5. Skills Grant very nearly startled when Johns sauntered through the door less than an hour after he'd left. He just managed to conceal the reaction, spoke without looking up. "That was fast."

Johns's reply was haughty. "I told you it was a simple job."

Grant didn't bother hiding his response to that; he leaned back in his chair, twirling his pen between his fingers, and gave Johns an incredulous stare.

Johns met his gaze as he sauntered another couple of steps into the room, and Grant had to fight not to wince. The man carried himself with an arrogance that bordered on sickening, made worse by the fact it was entirely justified.

"The other... contractors I approached didn't seem to think it was so simple," Grant said, when Johns showed no signs of elaborating.

The corner of his mouth quirked up, the beginning of that signature smirk. "Should've approached me first."

"You're fucking expensive, Johns. I'm not gonna pay your rates if I can avoid it." Grant tried not acknowledge the fact he was lying; if half the stuff he'd heard about Jay Johns was true, he'd notice any deception. The only thing Grant really had going for him was that there was no reason for Johns to think he was anything but another client.

And that seemed to be working in his favour; Johns raised one shoulder, let it drop. "You get what you pay for."

"I can assume then that you have the item?"

Johns's eyes rolled upwards momentarily, before he stalked far enough forward to place a small box at the end of the table. Grant couldn't help himself tensing, and judging from the shape of Johns's smile, he didn't miss it.

"As promised," he drawled, entirely at ease. He twisted one hand almost idly, and a phone shimmered into being between his fingers. "Payment?"

"Will be wired when I confirm the authenticity," Grant said, pulling off a passably indifferent air.

The phone was replaced by a knife with incredible swiftness. Grant shifted just enough that he could stand without being impeded by the table.

"What." Johns's gaze was as flat as his voice.

"This is not some drug dealer spat," Grant said as evenly as he could. "An item like this requires verification. Surely you know that."

Somehow Johns managed to give the impression he was abruptly closer than he had been, even though Grant was certain he hadn't seen him move. He tried not to acknowledge the sudden thrum of his pulse in his ears.

"You'd better not try to screw me," Johns said, his voice dangerously pleasant.

"Please." Grant realised his pen had stilled; he resumed twirling it as he continued. "We're both professionals. You'll get your payment."

"Good." Johns stared at him for a long moment, and then turned and started for the door. He hesitated in the doorway, glancing over his shoulder. "Cuz I know where you live."

Grant had relaxed enough that he was able to snort dismissively. "I don't live here, Johns."

"Oh, I know." That damned smirk was back, wide enough to show a flash of teeth. "You live over on Monaro Drive. Lovely little bungalow. Your roses are doing real well this year."

Well that was fucking unnerving. Grant didn't have the presence of mind to hide his shock; there was no way -- no way -- Johns could possibly know that.

The fucker's smirk was broad enough to nearly be called a grin. "Hope I don't see you again, Grant." He winked, and then he was gone.

An embarrassingly long few minutes passed before Grant recovered enough to pull out his phone. The woman answered on the second ring.

"So?"

"Forty-three minutes," Grant said, leaning over to pull the box towards him. He cracked it open to peer at the contents, unnecessarily. "And Deidre? He fucking knows where I live."

There was a pause. Grant was vaguely gratified that that seemed to have thrown her as well.

"It's okay," she said finally. "It's not gonna be a problem for much longer."

"You'd better fucking hope so." Grant glanced towards the front door, and then down at the box again. "Regardless, let me know when they've got him in custody."

"You wanna make contact?"

"Fuck no." Three different security systems, seven guards, lead-lined vault. It'll take a savant to do this in less than ninety minutes. Unless he can walk through walls. "But I think I'm gonna stay in a hotel until then."

#WIP: CASCADE #character study #original writing #writeblr #excerpt #ish

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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Utopia US Remake Ending Explained: Who is Mr Rabbit?

https://ift.tt/3kvTqix

Warning: contains major Utopia spoilers

With newly invented characters and a whole new world wrapped around bad guys/pragmatic planet savers The Harvest (the US version of The Network), Gillian Flynn’s Utopia makes considerable changes to the Channel 4 original. It’s faithful though, in most of the ways that matter – Jessica Hyde, the unforgettable Arby, Wilson Wilson and more are all kept intact, just transplanted from London to Chicago. There’s some very close translation of a few memorable scenes, as well as a good amount of invention. Flynn rewrites the backstory to weave in new setting ‘Home’, and new players, chief of which are John Cusack‘s Dr. Kevin Christie and Rainn Wilson’s Dr. Michael Stearns (the latter a sort-of combination of the original’s Michael Dugdale and scientist Donaldson).

Flynn’s series takes the bold step of taking us inside the shady global organisation pulling the strings of global virus outbreaks, and building an unsettling cult mythology around it with its own tagline: what have you done today to earn your place in this crowded world? Well, in our case, we’ve sorted through the many threads of the Utopia remake finale to explain anything viewers may have missed the first time around… Major spoilers ahead.

Who is Mr Rabbit?

‘Christie and I have parted ways, he just doesn’t know it yet.’

It seems that both Christie and Milner are ‘Mr Rabbit’, i.e. the head of shadowy bio-warfare/new society group The Harvest. Both have the Chinese symbol for rabbit carved into their torsos, and both worked together on the production of viruses for use as germ-warfare post 9-11. The mysterious Milner (The Wire‘s Sonja Sohn), however, told Jessica that she and Christie had parted ways, though he didn’t know it yet, pointing the way to a potential rivalry should there be a second season.

What is The Harvest?

It’s the organisation started by Christie and Milner, which is behind the introduction of man-made viruses into the population. Its ultimate purpose, or at least, Christie’s purpose, is to sterilise the global population for three generations, thereby forcibly reducing overpopulation and the strain it places on the planet’s natural resources.

What is Home?

‘A new society, a grand social experiment’

The headquarters of The Harvest, where children (especially twins – matching pairs are useful in genetic studies) are shipped in from impoverished countries all over the world and brainwashed in Christie’s beliefs. Some are experimented on, some are trained –like Arby – to be assassins, others are trained to sacrifice themselves as martyrs. They’re all taught to respect the ‘purpose’ assigned to them, and to end each day by asking what they’ve done to earn their place in this crowded world.

What is hidden inside the Flu vaccine?

‘You won’t be having any children’

A sterilisation gene that’s passed down for three generations, stopping anybody who got the vaccine from having children during that time. It’s part of Christie’s Thanos-alike plan to reverse global overpopulation and reduce the pressure it puts on scarce natural resources, which he predicts would lead to the “war of wars”.

What happened to Jessica in that yellow house?

‘Your father created you for me’

She was gassed and experimented on as a child, her body used to test viruses, vaccines and genetic behavioural modifications. The ‘presents’ she remembers being delivered were crates of children purchased from their parents in poverty all over the world, there to be used as lab rats, or trained as soldiers or martyrs. When ‘Mr Rabbit’ used to give Jessica cookies, presumably they were infected with various flus against which she’d been vaccinated. (Or maybe they were just cookies? He does love kids, after all.) Jessica lived there alone, being experimented on by her father, until Artemis (a combination of UK character The Tramp and Jessica’s unseen trainer/saviour Christos, whom a 15-year-old Arby tortured to death) broke them both out, hiding Jessica’s father in an institution and taking the girl on the run.

Who was the man in Jessica Hyde’s basement?

‘My dear, he didn’t care about you at all’

Jessica’s father, the scientist who drew the Dystopia and Utopia comics, and who manufactured multiple viruses during his time working for The Harvest. When Artemis sprang young Jessica and her father from Home and took them on the run, she hid Jessica’s father in an insane asylum (the same one Dr Mike was checked into by his Harvest sleeper agent/wife Maureen), before Milner presumably had it burned to the ground, taking Jessica’s father and imprisoning him in the basement underneath the yellow house.

Utopia Review (Spoiler-Free)

By Lyra Hale

Utopia: How the US Remake Changes the UK Show’s Most Controversial Sequence

By Louisa Mellor

Is Milner Jessica’s biological mother?

‘I’m not Homeland, I’m Home’

There’s nothing to suggest that Jessica wasn’t simply part of a shipment of children, raised by her scientist ‘father’ in the same way that Dale was given twins Charlotte and Lily to raise as his own. However, there’s a chance that she could be her father’s biological child, and if so, there’s also a chance that Milner is her biological mother (though at this stage, we’re only in the realm of mad speculation.) Arby does call Jessica his sister, but presumably he’s talking figuratively in light of their shared childhoods as lab rats.

Why did Arby/John betray The Harvest?

‘Every child needs love, I think’

Because he read the Utopia pages he’d taken from Grant, and realised that The Harvest had subjected him to experiments as a child that turned him into an unfeeling monster able to commit brutal acts without feeling remorse. Arby (a modification of the initials R.B, which stood for Raisin Boy, the name the Harvest scientists gave him because of his fondness for chocolate-covered raisins – he didn’t even have a name) realised that Harvest had mistreated him, and so decided to choose his own name – John – and his own purpose: to help his ‘sister’ in experimentation, Jessica Hyde.

Why was Wilson Wilson with Thomas and Christie in the end?

‘Everything I do is a cure for our current situation.’

Because (unless he’s playing the double agent game) Wilson Wilson had come around to Christie’s way of thinking, and so betrayed the group. As its most fringe member, and a believer in conspiracy theories, Wilson felt that Christie was right about global overpopulation (remember his frustration about Dr Mike and the rich oligarch whose house they crashed at having too many belongings?). Wilson, we can assume, has now joined The Harvest as one of Christie’s followers, despite The Harvest having murdered his family.

Why didn’t Dr Mike destroy the vaccine’s mother egg?

‘Whoever holds the egg holds the power’

When Dr Mike destroyed the eggs in which the vaccines were stored, it was assumed he also destroyed the mother-egg containing the source of the sterilisation vaccine that Christie Labs were preparing to send out all over the United States. The last we saw Dr Mike, he was driving out of Chicago with the mother-egg intact. After being used and manipulated by Christie and The Harvest, he’s taken the vaccine mother-egg to use as a bargaining chip.

How did Jessica get the T-shaped rash flu and why didn’t she die?

‘Your blood is slowly saving you.’

On the drive back from destroying the bunnies at the travelling petting zoo that was spreading the ‘Stearns’ flu around US schoolchildren, Jessica was bitten on the finger by the white rabbit the gang had taken for Dr Mike to test. She was thus infected with the flu and started to develop its characteristic T-shaped forehead rash. Dr Mike discovered that the rabbit was infected with flu, but it was a different strain to the one he’d developed a vaccine for. That told him that the vaccine in production at Christie Labs wouldn’t cure the T-shaped flu – that was all just pantomime to get Americans clamouring for the vaccine – so it must have been designed for another secret purpose (see above).

What were all those marks on Jessica’s back?

‘Thanks to you, humans will be immune from acting with greed.’

The constellation of different shaped marks on Jessica’s back, like her ‘starburst’ arm mark, are scars from various vaccinations and experiments her father and Milner performed on her. Milner and Jessica’s father were working on genetic modifications to human behaviour, forcing people to “act correctly” by taking away their free will. Inside Jessica Hyde’s blood is a whole bunch of vitally important genetic information, which is why Milner needed Jessica herself back at Home. The Harvest’s search for the Utopia manuscript was only ever intended to bring Jessica back after Artemis smuggled her and her father out when she was a child.

How did Becky contract Deel’s Syndrome?

‘What we are doing is far bigger than death.’

She was deliberately infected with it by The Harvest when they sent the disease out into US schools in order to test whether they could introduce a virus into humans that would then be passed on genetically, as a dress rehearsal of the sterilisation plan.

Where did everybody end up?

‘We won, we wiped you out.’

Jessica is currently being held captive by Milner, along with her father, at Home. Becky was captured by Thomas, Christie and Wilson Wilson, who appears to have gone over to the dark side. Grant (still wanted for the killing of Cara’s family) was captured by the police. Alice and Ian were left on the run together. And Dr Mike was last seen driving out of Chicago with the ‘Stearns Flu’ vaccine mother-egg in his possession.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Utopia is available to stream now on Amazon Prime.

The post Utopia US Remake Ending Explained: Who is Mr Rabbit? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3681MZI

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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the-record-newspaper · 5 years ago

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The killing of Rhonda Hinson Part 39

Editor’s note: This is the continuation of a series about the Dec. 23, 1981, murder of Rhonda Hinson.

Superior Court Judge Beverly T. Beal who signed the order to have the hospital records of the late Elmer Buff released to authorities.

By LARRY J. GRIFFIN

Special Investigative Reporter

For The Record

Tu eres mi chica con pelo armarillo [Sic] y yo te amorer siempre. (That’s Spanish).—From a Feb. 7, 1980, 3 a.m., letter addressed to Rhonda Hinson from Greg McDowell. Translation: You are my girl with the yellow hair and I love you always.

Detective James “Flash” Pruett returned to work on Wednesday Aug. 7, 1996, having recuperated from his bike accident.

First on his agenda, the detective conferred with those who continued the investigative inquiry into the killing of Rhonda Hinson while he was convalescing. He wrote about the conferral in his shorter-than-usual synopsis of the day’s activities:

“Lieutenant [Greg] Calloway brought me up to date on the status of the case. He, Sheriff Epley and Sgt. Jim Smith interviewed numerous people. I will include their information in the file when received. In the meanwhile, I was instructed by Sheriff Epley to attempt to get medical files on Elmer Buff and then work on the best leads in the case. I understand a number of new leads have surfaced. Lieutenant Calloway informed me S/A [Special Agent] John Suttle would come by Monday, August 12, 1996, to discuss the new leads.”

When SA John Suttle and Detective Pruett met at the Burke County Sheriff’s office on Monday, Aug. 12, 1996, they first discussed several other cold cases that Lt. Calloway had reassigned to Flash because several other detectives—initially investigating them—had been transferred to different positions. Coincidentally, SA Suttle happened to be the lead SBI investigator for those cases; Mr. Pruett wanted to be of assistance.

Then thoughts and conversation turned to the Hinson cold case. The erudite detective summarized the essence of their deliberations in his file notes: “John and I discussed obtaining a court order for Elmer Buff’s medical records. It was John’s opinion we didn’t need much probable cause for an order.”

Previously, on Thursday, July 25, 1996, Detective Jim Smith had initiated an Authorization for Release of Medical Records (Doctor or Hospital) to obtain the late Elmer Loomis Buff’s medical records from Frye Regional Medical Center (FRMC). Floread Buff Hoffman—Mr. Buff’s wife during his lifetime—signed the document. Purportedly, Detective Smith conveyed the authorization to FRMC but was refused the records. Detective Pruett explained:

“Cynthia Harbinson of Frye Regional Medical Center and/or Frye Regional Medical Center South Campus would not honor the request and demanded a court order. The request was made under G.S. 122C-53, but the wording “may release” left the decision up to the record holder. I formed a petition and order today for a Superior Court Judge to hopefully sign…John felt the Judge would sign the order especially since the wife had earlier signed a medical release form.”

Later in the afternoon of Aug. 12, 1996, Suttle met Flash again to proofread the petition. He suggested including one other detail that would strengthen their argument and increase the likelihood that the judge would sign the order. Once completed, the two investigators conveyed the petition to the courthouse.

The authorization’s narrative details the last tragic years of the life of Elmer Buff. Elmer and his wife, Floread, resided in a house upon the ridge opposite the Holly Hills development, south of the I-40/Hwy 350 interchange. The Buff property looked out toward Valdese and—more significantly—toward the incline that Rhonda Hinson was attempting to negotiate when a fatal bullet struck her, ending her brief life in 1981.

Born on Friday, Dec. 21, 1917, Elmer Loomis Buff was the youngest of Edison and Mary E. York Buff’s three children—one girl and two boys. While in his twenties, Mr. Buff served in the U.S. Army during World War II and achieved the rank of corporal. The circumstances of his military service ostensibly haunted him as the ‘demons of war’ tortured him relentlessly—especially during the waning years of his life.

Neighbors living near the Buff residence explained to Sheriff Richard Epley that they had witnessed Mr. Buff ‘…firing long weapons indiscriminately in the neighborhood and toward traffic signs on Highway 350.’ Factually, he did own a number of military-style weaponry at the time of the Hinson murder.

Suffering from what would be currently diagnosed as, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the concomitant depression, Mr. Buff purportedly experienced agonizing ‘flashbacks’ and subsequently entertained suicidal thoughts. According to records, he attempted suicide on Tuesday, Dec. 11, 1984 at his home. Mrs. Buff discovered her spouse in the bathroom draped over the bathtub and a note stating that “…when you do wrong, you have to pay.” Mr. Buff was treated for multiple lacerations to both arms, but survived the attempt.

Approximately seven years later—in 1991—Elmer Buff was admitted to a mental health facility for treatment for his PTSD. Purportedly while there, he confided to another resident that “…if my family knew what I did, they would hate me.” Inexplicably, the resident—who later reported the conversation to law enforcement—inferred that Mr. Buff was implicating himself in the killing of Rhonda Hinson.

About a week after his release from the mental health treatment facility—on Monday, April 22, 1991—Elmer Buff made a second attempt to end his life. This time he succeeded. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the projectile having been fired from an Iver Johnson 20-gauge single-barrel shotgun. Mrs. Buff told authorities, at the time, that her husband had been depressed for a long time.

Army Corporal Elmer Buff was interred at Burke Memorial Park atop a slight incline, looking back toward the main road and the carillon near which Rhonda Hinson reposes. Tragically—in 1991—he had become another casualty of World War II.

On the very day that Detective Pruett and SA Suttle brought the petition to the judge’s chambers—Aug. 12, 1996—an order was signed by Superior Court Judge Beverly T. Beal authorizing the release of the hospital records of the late Elmer Buff. Of the outcome Flash wrote:

“John convinced him we needed the facts to the case and he swore both of us to the petition and signed the order. We returned to the Sheriff’s Office and I made copies for John’s files. We have plans to meet in the morning at the Hickory Police Department. I won’t serve the order at Frye until John can be with me.”

“Flash never believed for one moment that Mr. Buff had anything to do with Rhonda’s death; he was simply following through with what Richard Epley had ordered him to do,” Judy Hinson averred in a recent conversation with The Record. “One of Elmer’s family members told me that he was as good a man as you would ever want to meet; but when he had a flashback, he became a different person altogether.”

Finally in his August 12th daily synopsis for the case files, Flash noted that John Suttle had been following leads “from locals and from memos” subsequent to an airing of Rhonda’s case on Unsolved Mysteries. One of those leads apparently merited investigation in Suttle’s estimation. An informant called to report that a man, who had previously been a suspect immediately after the killing of Rhonda Hinson, had been attempting to shoot his wife that early morning but shot Rhonda by mistake. It was a skeptical Detective Pruett who penned in his summary that:

“[This informant’s] information may just be like the hundreds of others which have been repeated over and over. Each time some well meaning [Sic] person reported old information, thinking law enforcement had never heard it before. Four new Unsolved Mysteries memos came in just today. All four accused Oscar Pascal and/or Steve Hoyle. I feel some people are just trying to hurt other people and enjoy hearing about them being interviewed by us.”

Rightfully, Flash placed no credence in the reports and simply filed these “memos” inside the substantive case records along with a multiplicity of other tips and leads. [NOTE: The groundless rumors implicating Oscar Pascal and Steve Hoyle will be examined in a future installment near the conclusion of this series.]

In 1997, Bobby and Judy Hinson procured a 1982 Datsun 210 that was similar to the vehicle that Rhonda was driving when she was killed.

“We were on Hwy 16 going toward Charlotte and passed by a house a saw the car,” Judy Hinson recalled. “It was the same color and everything. There weren’t a lot of changes made to the Datsun back then; so, it was almost an exact duplicate of Rhonda’s car. We kept hearing about how important it was to at least have the trunk lid in order to determine the direction of the bullet. So, we thought that if they had the whole car then it might be even more helpful…The car wasn’t really for sale; however, we told the owner about Rhonda and the case and how having the car could be beneficial. So, he agreed to sell it to us.”

Once in possession of the vehicle, Bobby Hinson drove it to the Burke County Sheriff’s Department and left it with Detective Pruett to be utilized in ballistics-testing during a reconstruction of the Dec. 23, 1981, crime scene. The objective was to place the 1982 Datsun 210 in the final position of Rhonda’s 1981 Datsun and, from that starting point, ascertain from whence the bullet originated and the relative location of the victim’s automobile on the Eldred Street incline when the fatal shot struck her.

On Oct. 15, 1997, a couple SBI agents met with John Suttle and James Pruett at the Burke County Sheriff’s Department to commence the crime scene investigation. The subsequent results forever dispelled several theories relative to the location of the vantage point from which the shooter fired into the trunk of Rhonda’s vehicle. One of the hypothesized locations definitively excluded from the list of possibilities was that of the property of the late Elmer Loomis Buff.

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thegnasticious · 6 years ago

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Single vs. Multi-player

I’ve been playing games since I was about 5-10 years old and one of my biggest debates still is whether single-player is more pertinent than multi-player. This debate can factor down to multiple things, such as what a person might be entertained by and if they really want to play with others or what is AI. Having great experiences with games such as Banjo Kazooie, Zelda, Mario, Castlevania, Megaman, Sonic and many more, I have played and beat some of the best. These early titles without the capability of internet had a capacity in the single player to sometimes last for weeks of gameplay, depending on developer/difficulty. Nowadays this element is completely lacking. Having just reached a 100% in Red Dead Redemption 2 I’ve realized yet again a stark reality of the modern evolution of games. The single player is to be flat out, passed a story perspective, boring. As much as it entices me to return to a game, without much reasoning, it quickly becomes only recreation when there is no element of challenge. If you contrast this element to early single player games, you realize everything they were doing then to milk playtime with little content is the challenge that established some of the quips that drive the still existing franchises today.

Then you have games like Dark Souls. Games that are relentlessly brutal and use the power of AI, gambling and self-greed against the player. Many have accused Dark Souls of being Masochistic. Having survived and beaten all three core games, I have to say the game does test even a seasoned player’s patience. The enemies are ahead of your moves and some such as the mushroom men can single handedly fuck your game up for a good hour or so in as little as a moment. A big part of Dark Souls that holds similarity to RDR2 is how much of the game is initially unexplained. Much of this leads to one googling half of the game’s progression and depending on the game’s content this can either be a chore or a pleasure. Much of what I’ve discovered in postgame Rockstar games, Assassin’s Creed and some others is what devolves into a collect-a-thon that sometimes is very time consuming and somewhat stressful in a sense of boredom. The poignancy of these games seems to break down without driven narrative in Lamen’s.

I find it interesting that games try to emulate hunting/fishing. Some do it well and some expose the improbable nature of a digital hunting environment by either making animals too easy and/or hard to find. Yet again another element that if reduced to old gameplay mechanics could find substantial improvement. Being a big element of RDR2, it unfortunately means that if you can’t stomach the many skinning and gutting animations, you might never progress to the game’s official completion. That being said, a game that lacks varied and diverse enemies as well as ones that aren’t killable sets up post game, what is a hunting simulator. For this reason I desperately hope RDR2 decides to develop single player over multi player, introducing some sort of enemy element that doesn’t just die. Zelda had surprisingly good but simple fishing, Final Fantasy has recently done a decent take on it as well that stands as decent. I would like to see more hunting/fishing in future games but it would be good if it didn’t seem to compromise the majority of the end game as it does in Red Dead.

Now to bring up the point of Red Dead. Depending on when you discovered Red Dead one recognizes it as either Redemption or Revolver. Having played both, I am still waiting for an acknowledged and sensible crossover of the games, though none has been officially made. I originally 100% redemption in hopes of a crossover reveal and also my own self made theory. Neither happened, but I feel obligated to explain what could of been possible. Back in the day when Banjo Kazooie was first released it had a strange coding for Stop N’ Swop items that was previously unknown to most players. Upon opening this code it was discovered that it was implementation for a certain string of hidden items unlocking stuff from Banjo Kazooie to the follow-up, Banjo Tooie. In vain hopes I had hoped that Rockstar discovered such a thing and would open up the alien ships/UFO’s in GTA 5 from the ships in RDR2(spoiler sorry) allowing the player to port(abduct) Arthur into GTA 5 before he dies, and allowing a crossover reward that would wrap up eggs from both games, after joint 100% completion ( i.e. you have unlocked John Marston).

This would assuringly be the beginning of wrapping up GTA 5′s online that will be encompassed by GTA 6 and hopefully allow the player to port their online earnings/vehicles/weapons into single player with a final patch. In a weird way the developers owe this to the hardcore fanbase, if they could just stop making a damn joke out of it and do it one night, maybe the jetpack conspiracists can actually find something and many of them would be disappointed by an actual solution, which makes it all the better. I would assume the UFO’s will then serve as a place to switch characters in the single player once 100% is achieved. This is all again, theories and wishful thinking.

Overall games that challenged me I still remember and play the most. Games such as Crash Bandicoot, Geometry Wars or even Pocket Tanks I still play for various forms of entertainment. My favorite form of games is unfortunately the least currently explored, RTS and Sim hybrids. They are usually the most time consuming games and with current capabilities of next-gen systems I’ve been waiting for a good replacement to Command and Conquer: Renegade or Red Alert 1+2. Unfortunately Westwood has all but dissolved and the best hopes for a decent console RTS still lies in a Starcraft port, that I still have my fingers crossed for. I would personally love seeing a Black and White 1 or 2 port, or new one altogether, but this would yet again require the resurrection of a now dissolved company (Lionhead).

It seems that in modern games the ones I find the most entertaining and memorable are alike to the current Destiny formula (though I love Bungie, I still haven’t jumped on the Destiny bandwagon) which features a hybrid of single and multi-player. This is also alike to Dark Souls which basically hosted it’s multiplayer through single player. This formula seems to be taking nods from MMO developments and in my opinion that is a good direction. Genres are supposed to evolve into new areas as the games develop and eventually reach a level where they can be considered non-linear creations. Some FPS hybrids have started delving into Counter-Strike territory which is a good sign. I have yet to see anything like Command and Conquer: Renegade on the consoles though. Once the player becomes more concerned then just with what they are shooting at, they realize the bigger game within the game. Almost every game could benefit with some form of resource gathering/management, and there isn’t a modern game that doesn’t have some sort of unlock tree, none of these things came from Goldeneye. This isn’t to say shooting isn’t important, but rather a synthesis of elements to make a game have longevity.

Best Single-Player: Black & White

Best Multi-Player: Command & Conquer: Renegade

Best RTS: Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 Yuri’s Revenge

Best Shooter: Halo (Bungie)

Best Adventure: Red Dead Redemption 2

Best Sim: RCT2

Best Sports: NFL Blitz

Best Fighting: Tekken 3

#red dead redemption 2 #spoilers #Singleplayer #Multiplayer #Halo #Bungie #Westwood #Xbox #PC #Gaming

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newaesthetes · 8 years ago

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ok I'm gonna answer @basiilhallward‘s questions for the tag thing bc I need a Break from reading crime and punishment and there’s nothing nicer than an excuse to talk about myself

1. 5 songs you like, and what do you like about them?

brand new- soco amaretto lime. Youth! I don't know, it makes my heart swell a little, the lyrics could almost be a happy song, we’re young and it reminds me of walking in the dark when I'm tipsy after a party The front bottoms- the plan. its a nice little fuck you society song that its easy to jump around in your room to, also weirdly inspirational the world is a beautiful place and I am no longer afraid to die- Wendover. a good song, a bit Sad John lennon- imagine because you know, I'm That champaign socialist. but this was also the first song I learnt on the guitar (also the green day cover version bc that one makes me wanna start a revolution) vampire weekend- unbelievers - its fun And makes me think about god and shit 2. favourite bit of theatre you’ve seen/read/heard

you Know I love Bourne’s swan lake. The opera I saw in Verona was an Experence. In terms of straight theatre? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead is always a fave

3. if you could get any job, no questions asked, no qualifications needed, what would you chose?

ah I don't know, you mean right now at this point in my life or in the future. I guess I feel like if I couldn't deal with the questions and qualifications side of a job I wouldn't be ready to actually.... do it. idk, I guess id love to go into research. 4. someone you want to talk to again? i never want to talk to anyone lol. idk a few months ago i had a rather difficult conversation with one of my friends and we’ve grown apart since and i think I'm almost at the stage where ill want to reach out and talk to them again. but idk, if i want to talk to someone i message them, and i have a tendency to... not want to push reaching out again to people i used to be close to- the memories are there. when i was in yr 9 i remember wanting that friendship group to meet up again at the end of yr 13 to see how we’d all done but now I'm here i don't feel that desire at all really. 5. something good that happened recently!

i passed my driving test the other day which is... neat 6. pick up the nearest book and type out the 1st (few if needed) lines! do you like the book?

I'm sitting right next to my e m forster short stories so

‘My pedometer told me that I was twenty-five; and, though it is a shocking thing to stop walking, I was so tired that I sat down on a milestone to rest. People outstripped me, jeering as they did so, and even when Miss Eliza Dimbleby, the great educationalist, swept past, exhorting me to persevere, I only smiled and raised my hat’ (that's the start of The Other Side of the Hedge)

yeah I like this book! ive only read three of the stories but they've been good so far, I'm keeping the rest for uni bc I find it better to read short stories than novels when I'm busy.

i actually wrote half of the answers to these questions yesterday including the above one and i thought id check out the book beside me today which is my Sylvia Plath journals. it begins ‘july 1950- i may never be happy, but tonight i am content’ and i thought that was worth writing here. i tried to read all the jounals a number of years ago but gave up half way. putting aside the weirdness of reading someone’s diary, its an incredible read. she was fascinating. 7. do you believe in a higher power or a God?

no. Well, sometimes but not really. I am fully ready to accept the possibility that there is a God, I'm a bit of a classic agnostic in that I think its absurd to think anyone can Know either way. And sometimes I do rather fall back on the idea, and I Do have an affiliation with the Christian god. But in terms of true belief, in terms of faith, no. 8. a choice you wish you could have done differently

I don't have any specific regrets, there are some things ive done or said at various points (or not done or said) where life would be better if I had acted differently. But I’ve recently succumbed to the belief that the way we act is the only way we could have acted. I’ve acted the way I thought best at the time at any given point. I also think ive learned from every mistake ive made, if I avoided making it at one point I'm sure I would have made it again later. and I'm happy with where I am right now, its my choices that lead me here.

9. what brought you to tumblr in the beginning?

idk, i looked on my old blog and my first post was a reblog of that tyler josep tweet telling people to stay alive or smth. i was emo and sad and questioning my sexuality and from what i heard tumblr was the best place for being all of those things 10. somewhere you’ve never been and want to see?

Up to a month ago I would have said Florence but ive been there now :’) so next on my holiday pining list is probably st pertersburg, might take a few years.

11. what are you most proud of?

how far ive come in the last 2 years in terms of my self confidence. less abstractly, i independently researched and wrote an essay and presentation last year on art history and art theory and i put a lot of effort in and it was good

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mycroft-silently-judges-you · 8 years ago

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Sherlock, James Bond, and the Frankly Alarming Amount of Skyfall Parallels

(((This is Part 3 of my 18 part meta series (x) analyzing EMP Theory and evidence supporting it in TFP)))

Skyfall release date: November 9th, 2012

Sherlock series 3 release date: January 1st, 5th & 12th, 2014

Starting with series three, Sherlock started to let the Skyfall references fly, the most obvious being one that nearly everyone caught at the time:

Which was the point. Gatiss and Moffat wanted us to catch onto the Skyfall reference because they already knew what they were going to do with series four and this was meant to act as an attention-getter. As for why they would use Skyfall specifically, it’s because it was the last released James Bond movie at the time and it would be the one the public would be most likely to recognize being referenced there’s also the whole Bond faking his death thing but whatever

Does that mean there are no references to other Bond movies? Not at all. Did you wonder why they would go through the trouble and expense of making a metal grill for a bad guy you see for the grand total of two seconds?

Or why a bomb was stopped on an important number reference?

Or why THEY LITERALLY CAST SOMEONE WHO HAD BEEN IN A BOND MOVIE TO HEAD SHERRINFORD???

Coincidence? The universe is rarely so lazy.

Below the cut:

An exhaustive list and picture reference for every Skyfall parallel

References to other James Bond movies

How we know it’s canon Sherlock has seen the James Bond movies

How, in the end, this all circles back to Johnlock

Skyfall Parallels

Skyfall opens with Bond in pursuit of a hard drive containing the identities of intelligence agents

Which the bad guy is stupid enough to wear around his neck

But whatever. M is heading up the operation at MI6, where they are tracking Bond

Who is chasing the bad dude through a bazaar

During the course of which he drives his motorcycle on stairs

Because apparently all MI6 agents have mad motorcycle skills The pursuit ends with Bond chasing the bad guy to the top of a train, where he gets shot

Bond ultimately gets shot again and falls over the side of the train

And into a river that carries him over a waterfall

And pulled under into “deep waters.” Which is basically the essence of EMP theory. During the credits sequence we are given a shot of a woman holding a Walter PPK, the gun model Bond uses throughout the movie. This shot will come back to haunt us later. Until then...

After the shooting at the waterfall, Bond is declared dead

And he lets everyone go right on believing it and for the moment, the audience believes he is as well.

The bad guys, now in possession of the hard drive, hack into MI6 *cough*Mary on her cellphone in TAB*cough* and this message pops up on M’s laptop

“Think on your sins” is what I believe the entire point of TFP is, but that’s a meta all on its own In her rush to get back to MI6, she is stopped on Vauxhall Bridge and is forced to watch as MI6 is blown up

After the terror attack, we are shown that Bond is alive

And sporting a pretty wild array of scars from various missions, some of which are on his back

He goes drinking in a beachside bar where he finds out from a CNN bulletin that there was a terror attack in London and he goes back to take down those who did it

If Mycroft can be Wikipedia he can also be Wolf Blitzer. Upon arriving back in London, Bond decides that his best course of action is to go scare the shit out of M as his way of announcing he’s back and to tell her that his faked death lent “perspective��

M accepts him back on the condition that he passes his physical and mental exams at MI6. Bond goes in and when faced with the psychiatrist, he’s told he’ll have to go through a round of word association

He does fine until he’s faced with the word Skyfall

He freezes when it’s uttered and then walks out of the room. M tells him in her super cool office that he’s passed his exams and is assigned to go after the agent who took the hard drive and find out who he’s working for

Bond meets Q at the National Portrait Gallery where he’s given the papers he’ll need to go after the agent in Shanghai

Once in Shanghai, he follows the agent to a business building where he sets up a perch to assassinate someone in the next building over

Bond then fights the assassin, who pushes him through a glass pane

And you know what’s behind them during this fight scene?

A HUGE BLUE DISPLAY OF JELLYFISH. Bond Sherlock and the assassin trying to kill him Mary in front of a massive display of blue jellyfish wow wow ANYWAY. Bond is still looking a hot mess and after a shave

He gets back in his groove. Next he goes to a crazy beautiful floating casino to cash in a chip he found on the agent he killed. A woman comes down to meet him who he knows is connected to the big bad guy who is behind the terrorist attack on MI6. When he wants to have a conversation with her free from prying ears, he removes his earpiece

She agrees to take Bond to the island where the big bad guy is via boat

It’s an abandoned island based on a real one called Ghost Island

Bond comes face-to-face with the villain, Silva, who was a former agent that went rogue *cough*Mary*cough* Silva tells him a story about how his grandmother had an island and that when it became infested with rats, she set a trap that the rats fell into and for survival, they began eating one another. When there were only two rats left, she released them back into the wild because they only ate rats anymore. He implies that they are the last two rats, that they are alike and should team up. “Eat others or eat each other” *cough*Moriarty*cough* Silva then goes onto use sexuality to faze Bond

The confrontation continues and Silva says that he hacked MI6′s system and pulled up Bond’s file. It revealed that M lied when she said Bond passed his tests and that the psychiatrist determined he had a substance abuse problem and authority issues traced back to “unresolved childhood trauma.” He taunts Bond’s dedication to Queen and country, saying he needs a hobby. Bond says his is ”resurrection.” This all ends with Silva being taken into custody and back to London. He’s contained in a “prison inside a prison” type cell

Silva confronts M when she comes to see him for turning him over to the Chinese who tortured him for five months before he managed to escape Ajay is that you? M leaves for a meeting that could determine the fate of the 00 section of MI6. During this meeting, she quotes Tennyson’s Ulysses, a poem the late poet described as being about his "need of going forward and braving the struggle of life" after the loss of a friend Sherlock post-wedding anyone? Meanwhile, Q is shown to be examining Silva’s computer and in doing so inadvertently releases a program that hacks MI6′s systems to open every door, allowing Silva to escape and go after M to kill her for her perceived betrayal. Bond chases him into the Underground

Into a station

And exits at Westminster

I am literally setting this show on fire Bond gets to the meeting and manages to extract M before Silva can kill her. He says they need to ditch the government car because of its tracking system and he takes her to his storage unit where his Aston Martin is stored

Bond proceeds to take her to a place where he believes he’ll have the upper-hand against Silva: Skyfall, his ancestral home

Which even comes with a creepy graveyard and everything

When they are approaching it, he remarks that a east wind “storm is coming.” With the help of M and the old groundskeeper, Bond sets up defenses inside Skyfall. At sunset, Silva arrives with his goons in a helicopter

Blasting Boom Boom by The Animals

Which Bond calls out by saying “Always got to make an entrance.” Silva then proceeds to fuck shit up. He opens fire on Skyfall, throws explosives, the works. Skyfall burns to the ground

Have you set everything you own on fire yet? I have Bond escaped Skyfall through a hidden tunnel (after remarking that he hated the place), but Silva and one of his men manage to catch up with him as he’s running across the frozen lake Musgrave Hall had a lake too LORD HAVE MERCY Bond struggles with Silva’s dude behind him for his gun and shoots a circle into the ice below them, making them fall into the freezing water where they fight

And Bond kills him. Bond makes it to Skyfall’s chapel, where M and the groundskeeper are hiding, and kills Silva with a knife in the back, saying, “Last rat standing.” When M sarcastically asks what took him so long he replies, “Got into some deep water.” FUCKING SHOOT ME M sadly dies from a gunshot she got during the assault on Skyfall, which devastates Bond. Bond returns to London, which is when we get the shot we all know and love:

Now what’s interesting about Skyfall is that, unlike most Bond movies, the iconic gun barrel shot is at the end and not the beginning

With the red bleed shot differing greatly in shade

Now remember that shot at the beginning I said would come back to haunt us? The one comparing Norbury and the woman in the credits sequence holding a Walter PPK, which is traditionally Bond’s gun?

It’s especially interesting here because when compared to the ending of TLD, it is the gun used in the gun barrel shot, but the gun Eurus’ was using and fired at John is clearly not a Walter PPK

It’s a Sig Pro SP2022. So what’s the significance of the change? Why flash back to a Walter PPK?

BECAUSE MARY USED A SUPPRESSED WALTER PPK WHEN SHE SHOT SHERLOCK. If I’m right in thinking everything we’ve seen since Mary shot Sherlock has taken place entirely in Sherlock’s head, him flashing back to Norbury’s/Mary’s gun is further proof that the simulation he’s running is breaking down.

That, and he wasn’t willing to let a pesky detail like the type of gun Eurus used get in the way of him fulfilling his Skyfall Bond movie fantasy simulation because he loved that fucking movie so much. LOVED IT. Him and John have watched it at least 10 times.

It’s also not the only wonky detail about the gun barrel shot ending. You know how I said the blood color was different? Well, the red used in TLD closely resembles the red used in The Living Daylights gun barrel shot

You know, the one that featured a character named Kamran Shah played by Art Malik

Who played the governor of Sherrinford in the next episode. AMAZING

Other James Bond Movie References and Notes of Interest

Diamonds Are Forever (specifically mentioned on John’s blog (x))

The villain has faces crafted like his own and recruits body doubles to fake his death in case people like Bond or others come to kill him hello Irene/Moriarty hired Sherlock imposter in TRF When Bond “kills” him he says “Welcome to Hell” which will come to play later in another meta

A wallet being used to falsely identify someone (John as Sherlock in TBB)

This bullshit

During a scene when Bond implies that the diamonds are hidden in the dead guy’s ass. A guy who was falsely identified as Bond. Wow. Just wow.

When the dead “James Bond” was found, Bond says “Just proves no one is indestructible.” A mirror of Sherlock saying “I’m known to be indestructible” in TEH

The dead “Bond” is carried off in a hearse. Kind of like how the title TEH implies Sherlock’s body wasn’t in the hearse because he was alive, which is the case here

Two assassins trying to kill Bond, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, are a gay couple

“I’m afraid you’ve caught me with more than my hands up.” A nice dick pun that plays nicely into the 8,000 dick puns on Sherlock

The chick Bond works with only has communication with her connection to the diamond smuggling ring over the phone. Moriarty stays disconnected from his crimes, except for when he talks to the old lady hostage on the phone and Irene

Bond goes into a subterranean lab to find the diamonds. Reminiscent of the subterranean lab in HoB

The Spy Who Loved Me

First of two movies featuring Jaws, a villain who tries to kill Bond

He has metal teeth (like one of the guys who tortured Ajay in TST) and is extremely tall (like the Golem in TGG). One of the more memorable Bond villains

The title could be taken literally as being about Mary loving John it’s a selfish love but you get the gist

“I need you.” - woman to Bond (”Who needs me this time?” - Sherlock to Mycroft in HLV) “So does England.” - Bond to woman (”England” - Mycroft to Sherlock in HLV)

Woman Bond works with drugs him with powder in her cigarette so he’ll pass out, like Mary drugging Sherlock with powder in the letter in TST

Villains lair is aquarium-like and has sharks, which he points at and says “There’s death.” The pane you see the shark through is like the circle ones in the aquarium in TST and the death comment over the shot of the shark was like when Sherlock recites the Merchant of Samarra over shots of sharks in the beginning of TST

The Living Daylights (featuring Art Malik)

The woman Bond helps has a Stradivarius cello named Lady Rose, which was assembled in 1724. Eurus is said to have a Stradivarius violin in TFP. And Lady Rose, they call John’s baby Rosie

Once the crisis is averted and the woman saved, Bond sees a sign that gives the miles to Karachi. When he sees it he says to her, “I know a great restaurant in Karachi. We might be in time for dinner.” Sherlock saved Irene in Karachi

Various Other References

The numerical significance of a bomb time stop in Goldfinger (bomb in TEH)

A media mogul who uses blackmail to manipulate world leaders in Tomorrow Never Dies (Magnussen in HLV)

“James Bond is a blunt instrument wielded by a government department.” - Ian Fleming (James Bond creator). M refers to Bond as a “blunt instrument” in Casino Royale. There was also a song titled “Blunt Instrument” on the Casino Royale soundtrack composed by David Arnold. YES, THAT DAVID ARNOLD. The one who does the Sherlock soundtrack with Michael Price. Mycroft refers to Sherlock as a “blunt instrument” in HLV

Sherrinford has the sleek glass and stone appearance that is reminiscent of several Bond villain lairs

Mycroft’s insane umbrella sword/gun would fit right in with all the other crazy contraptions that come out of MI6 development

There are two Bond movies literally titled You Only Live Twice and Die Another Day, a theme Sherlock has been fucking around with since forever

BTW I think it’s hilarious that when a critic put Sherlock on blast after TST for “slowly morphing into James Bond” (x), Gatiss wrote a poem that basically said “fuck you Sherlock can be physical too” (x). Like, that review wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much attention as it did if Gatiss didn’t respond to it. This was basically cannon fire intended for us to take notice of. Like, bro, I’m already here. I see you.... and all your James Bond references.

James Bond in Sherlock’s Canon

Between the case write-ups of ASiP and TBB, John makes a blog post titled Diamonds are forever (x) where he bemoans Sherlock not taking a case about a missing diamond because he found it “boring” shout out to John for being all excited and ready with a blog title for a prospective case Things get interesting in the comments section when Sherlock asks where he’s heard the phrase “diamonds are forever.” John responds that it’s a James Bond movie and that they’re doing a “Bond night.”

Even though Sherlock acted salty in the comments, we do know from his own blog (x) that he did watch a Bond movie with John, potentially Diamonds Are Forever since that is the one John referenced

While James Bond is not mentioned on the blog again, it is featured in ASiB when Mycroft says “Bond air is go” and Sherlock later figures out that it is connected to flight 007. We can now assume that it is because John made him watch Bond movies that Sherlock understood the references

Johnlock

Something every Bond movie features is a Bond Girl. Ever since the early Bond movies, actresses have vied for the role. There is a massive amount of publicity surrounding whoever is being considered for the role and ultimately whoever gets it. It’s a huge deal. The name of the girl always changes and so does her role, but there is one constant:

Bond always, ALWAYS, gets the girl

If Sherlock is imagining his life right now as one big Bond movie, the huge aspect of romance is currently missing, which John said in TLD would complete him. It’s not so far-fetched to think that Sherlock will also get the girl in the end

Or, since Sherlock is gay, get the guy

When Johnlock happens, Gatiss and Moffat will have, in a sense, created not only the first explicitly confirmed gay Sherlock, but Bond as well. Even for them, that’s pretty audacious. Cheers to you sirs!

tl;dr

There are a shit ton of Skyfall references in Sherlock starting in series three, reaching a crescendo in series four, and Gatiss and Moffat are creating the first explicitly confirmed gay Sherlock and Bond.

PS - A special thank you to my boyfriend who, much like John, made me watch the James Bond movies, which is how I picked up on all these references. I thought they were ridiculous but, much like Sherlock, I enjoyed the time with my boyfriend.

#tjlc #johnlock #sherlock #james bond #skyfall #bbc sherlock #mark gatiss #steven moffat #emp theory #my meta #sherlock meta

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just-sort-of-happened · 8 years ago

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Why Eurus is four people

On the show I think that we see attraction often symbolised separately as sexual attraction and emotional attraction. I think that John fears the sexual attraction more than the emotional and that Sherlock fears the emotional more than the sexual.

I think she plays these two aspects for John and Sherlock about the other.

So in John’s life:

E (kiss, kiss) is Sherlock desiring him sexually. Hitting on him, picking him up and give in him his number (which is what happened in ASiP when they met).

So these personas occur for John as he wishes they would. He wants Sherlock to come out of the blue, sweep him off his feet, and to have an affair with him. What’s more passionate than an affair? He wants to have hot passionate tumultuous love making with him.

And, ‘The Therapist’, is Sherlock being emotionally attracted and attached to him.

He also wished that Sherlock would spend hours listening to him. Deeply understanding him. He wants to be in a relationship of total trust where Sherlock is literally all about him. In TLD he literally complains that everything’s always about Sherlock. Eurus will say that being her therapist was really all about talking about him. Now, she’s breaking character and mocking him but this really is what he wants from Sherlock.

In Sherlock’s life:

Faith, in red, is clearly a foil for John. Sherlock’s hope that John still wants him despite his feelings that John will never forgive him.

He wants to have an intriguing, and sensitive person, who’s got a cane and is suicidal take him out for chips. (Which is what happens in ASiP). He wants John to have sex with him. Faith brings up sex, says the word, ‘sex’, quite literally, in a humourous montage when it seems like Microft is asking how will someone forgive him? And faith answers, ‘sex’. And further, Sherlock says, ‘I’m sorry?’, like, further driving the point home that, ‘sorry = sex’. Faith is Sherlock’s faith and hope that John wants him and will forgive him. His faith that maybe sex with be something that will help John forgive him. Considering how angry John looks when he tells Sherlock to not miss out on love we could see that a bit of sex from Sherlock might smooth things over. (And by that I mean a declaration of romantic love, of course. Something mroe than just friendship).

Eurus, this one is more complicated because I see her as Sherlock’s tortured inner emotional life. But, for the purpose of this illustration, let’s say that she’s John. John who might still love him. Might still be in love with him but might also be angry to have been left behind, as Eurus, and who might be angry to have been left behind, in the well, as himself.

So, in this equation, Eurus is herself John, pushing, testing, trying to understand Sherlock. Trying to give him, ‘emotional context’. Telling him that if he doesn’t act fast the Three Garridebs will die and romance/love will pass him by.

In this way we see that Eurus is really angry the way that John is really angry. Maybe that’s why actual John in TFP is sort of a non-entity: he’s already the one in charge, the one controlling the game.

The questions Eurus as Samara Morgan raises are, well, the same questions that John in the well raises. As we may remember Samara (from The Ring) died in the well. She was put there by someone who was supposed to love her; after years of neglect. John feels this way about Sherlock.

All of her games are questions that John might have for Sherlock: whom do you love more, me or Mycroft? Whom do you love more, me or Molly? Or in fact, do you love Molly? But also using Molly as a foil for John: do you realise that John loves you? Eurus as John wants to know if Sherlock knows that Molly/John is in love with him and has been for years. And that’s why Molly looks sad and lonely and frazzled when we first see her, because she’s John. John is alone, John is sad, John is sick of eveyrhing being about Sherlock. He’s stick of being on the backburner, of getting hurt, of things never being about him. He, like Molly, wants to be seen and both are also trying to hide and unwilling to admit their love.

So, if we follow through on this theory of symbolism we can see the the final problem is facing John’s love for him. Facing John’s feelings. John is angry, John is scared, John feels isolated and alone, hopeless. John just wants to be held. John is afraid of, ‘the landing’, afraid of his sexual feelings for Sherlock and of where they might take him. (I talk about Sherlock’s fear of, ‘the landing’, here and if we see Eurus as John here then we can see that John has these exact same fears, too).

So, yeah, four people, all women because women are associated to feelings. TAB was all about how suppressing the women/feelings lead to an inevitable rebellion.

Two women dressed in red, symbolic of sex, one wants to text using their phone/hearts to warm up to eventually having a physical affair (’I wanted more’, John says in TLD). The other wants to receive an apology in the form of sex and eat delicious chips, symbolic of sex.

Two ethereal women dressed in white/blue, who want to talk about feelings. John’s therapist only wants to talk about him, him, him, instead of Sherlock all the time. And Eurus/Samara wants to know what Sherlock feels, what makes him tick. She is so desperate to know she literally traps him and forces him to tell her these things. She puts pressure on him, gives him, ‘emotional context’. The emotional context is that she loves him. That John loves him. That’s what she so desperately wants him to know.

Now, this adds an interesting element to watching John’s therapist become Eurus. This symbolically is Sherlock being receptive to John’s feelings, talking about all of his feelings. Except one, except John’s love for Sherlock. She brigns it up but he shuts it down. Or she gets the slightly more accepting: it is what it is, but that’s not good enough. She/Sherlock needs to force the issue so she literally embodies John’s love and becomes Euros/Samara/John in the well. John’s therapist doesn’t just bring up his love for Sherlock, she becomes it. She becomes John in love with Sherlock and she needs answers. She needs a hug.

#sherlock meta #TLD meta #TFP meta #Eurus is four people #two ladies in red = lust #two ladies in white/blue = feelings #nothing more than feelings

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componentplanet · 5 years ago

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Why Do 44% of Republicans Believe Bill Gates Will Use Coronavirus Vaccines to Inject Them With Microchips?

According to a recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll, 44 percent of Republicans believe that Bill Gates is plotting to use a COVID-19 vaccine campaign as cover for a mass microchip injection campaign. The survey, conducted May 20-21, showed substantial deviations between Democrats, Republicans, and independents on a host of issues. Among them: A significant gap in the belief that Bill Gates is attempting to use the coronavirus to inject Americans with tracking chips. Forty-four percent of Republicans believe this, compared with 19 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of independents.

Why This Isn’t Technically Possible

Before I talk about the conspiracy theory, I want to address the technical aspect of the question. Let’s forget the Bill Gates angle for a moment. Could an injectable microchip be used to provide tracking in the manner contemplated by this theory?

Anything injected into the body has to be incredibly tiny in order to pass through your blood vessels without causing an embolism. Tiny objects cannot carry much in the way of batteries and have very limited lifespans even in the best of cases. Even assuming we could build an injectable microchip, we have no way to keep them powered for any length of time.

Similarly, there’s no way the microchips would be able to transmit information independently. The human body is not an ideal environment for data transfer, and a tiny microchip tracker wouldn’t have the power to drive a radio. There are pilot projects for injectable robots and wireless power delivery, but not a single system capable of delivering the kind of technological breakthrough required to implement an injectable chip-based tracker.

The truth is, it would be far easier for governments to require Google and Apple to install mandatory tracking apps suited to their specific nations than to develop injectable microchips that can track everyone for the purposes of enforcing coronavirus quarantine (or whatever other nefarious idea was dreamed up).

Coronavirus, Partisanship, and Belief

As the pandemic has progressed, Democratic and Republican views of it have diverged. There are various explanations for this, including the fact that the worst outbreaks have been in blue states. Anecdotal evidence strongly indicates quarantine has been observed differently in different places; where I live in New York State mask-compliance has been near 100 percent. My friends in other states indicate this is very much not the case.

Self-identified Republicans believe many more factually incorrect things about coronavirus than Democrats or independents. There is no credible evidence that coronavirus was engineered in a lab, the US has conducted far fewer tests than the rest of the world (and far fewer than it should have), Sweden’s death rates have been much higher than Norway or Denmark, and there is no evidence COVID-19 is a bioweapon (also, it’s a terrible bioweapon).

Not all the incorrect beliefs are on the Republican side. Democrats mistakenly believe that coronavirus cases have surged in red states when the actual growth has been much slower and the overall situation is still murky. 73 percent of Democrats also believe President Trump called the virus a hoax; this is incorrect. Apparent evidence that he had done so was demonstrated to be a fake video edited in a misleading manner. (This data point is not shown in the graph above.)

The reasons for the beliefs above can be tied to the inaccurate and false statements often made by the President and uncritically repeated by various media outlets, but the “Bill Gates wants to weaponize coronavirus to track everyone” is a decided outlier. President Trump has never mentioned it. Fox News hasn’t pushed it. Furthermore, the other two conspiracy theories on this list — 5G and GMOs, respectively — score much lower with all Americans. Why do Bill Gates and the supposed coronavirus link stand out?

The idea of injectable chips, specifically, plays on common fears in American conspiracy theories related to the New World Order, black helicopters, and the Mark of the Beast. There has always been a significant streak of Christian eschatology in the beliefs of the survivalist and militia movements of the 1980s and 1990s that shaped the conspiracy theory fringe of what would become the Tea Party circa 2010.

The practical explanation for the conspiracy theory is that some people have dramatically misrepresented research Gates funded into the idea of passively tracking vaccine deliveries by using nano-imprinted quantum dots that could later be read by smartphone scanner.

Nothing about the idea had anything to do with tracking. The point was to create a record that a patient had been immunized that wouldn’t depend on the often-poor record-keeping in developing nations. The invisible quantum dot pattern concept doesn’t transmit information and hasn’t been commercialized or productized. The fact that he funded it, combined with his continued interest in digital identity concepts (even though he wants these identities to empower end-users far more than the status quo) has been used to stoke the flames of the conspiracy theory.

But why do people believe an idea like this in the first place, and why this conspiracy, specifically? As to the second, I’d wager it’s because Bill Gates is a known figure in the US, he’s associated with technology (which people increasingly distrust), he was critical of the United States’ early response to the coronavirus pandemic, and he represents a single powerful figure who has been powerful for much of the lives of many Americans. He’s a singular target and focus point for a lot of uncertainty and anxiety right now.

The government doesn’t really need to inject you with a microchip when it can mandate the deployment of a smartphone app instead. Image by XKCD

But part of the reason I think the Bill Gates/microchip vaccine theory has caught on is that it also plays on a particular type of political argument that Americans respond to, called the American Jeremiad.

The American Jeremiad

Writing in 1978, Sacvan Bercovitch described how Americans updated the ancient lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah to suit our own political vernacular:

American writers have tended to see themselves as outcasts and isolates, prophets crying in the wilderness. So they have been, as a rule: American Jeremiahs, simultaneously lamenting a declension and celebrating a national dream.

The American Jeremiad is a type of sermon or speech (the technique is widely used in secular speechmaking today, as well as in religious contexts) in which the speaker outlines a standard or principle of public life that we ought to uphold, details the ways in which Americans have fallen away from or failed to practice that standard, and then expresses a belief that by returning to these ideals and practices we can capture or create a better life for all of us.

The Gettysburg address is perhaps the most perfect example of an American Jeremiad ever written. It begins with a recognition that our forefathers “brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” It then acknowledges that the American people have fallen from this position: “We are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

How does it end?

“[T]hat this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

100 percent American Jeremiad. Accept no substitutes.

Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech is an equally powerful but significantly longer demonstration of the same art form. You can trace them back to John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity” speech given in 1630 aboard the Arabella before the Puritans had even reached the New Land. If the Gettysburg address speaks to you, hug a Pilgrim.

The idea that Bill Gates is working on a COVID-19 vaccine that will appear to save the world but secretly damn us all to an eternity of surveillance can claim some philosophical cover from the concerns of civil libertarians. But it borrows most of its conceptual punch from the Bible and its description of the Biblical Mark of the Beast. Bill Gates has talked about an unclear method of requiring citizens to present a certificate verifying that they are currently disease-free in order to enter a store. To some people, that sounds like the imposition of a mark that everyone must have in order to shop or engage with society.

The idea that we must be aware of this threat to our fundamental liberty and freedoms dovetails perfectly with the philosophical argument that the shutdown was an overblown, fearful reaction to a non-issue. It transfers the locus of blame from a shapeless virus or the vague specter of government to a single individual, and it offers a means by which ordinary Americans can reclaim their power in a time when they feel powerless. Rejecting the idea of a vaccine is painted as a demonstration of one’s faith in God or of your commitment to the sacred ideals America was founded on rather than a supposed commitment to live in fear. The overlap between these groups isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t have to be.

Arguments about the Mark of the Beast are also fundamentally arguments about purity and keeping the body sanctified. It doesn’t matter if that means rejecting the idea of a coronavirus vaccine over fears of contamination from “chemicals” or RFID chips or because of religious fears. Anti-vaccination advocates are another group of people who are strongly motivated by purity/contamination concerns, and this line of thinking often manifests itself in surprising ways in the United States.

Even though many conspiracy theorists are not explicitly religious, there are common themes of collapse and renewal to be found in the Book of Revelation and in the idea that America is under siege and in danger of fundamental collapse, and only the actions of a free and independent group of citizens dedicated to the principles expressed in the founding of the Republic is capable of saving it. In the late 1990s, those self-described groups of people were the various militia movements, with their certainty that black helicopters would soon arrive with troops and launch the New World Order. In the 2010s, we saw a very similar argument with a hefty dash of birtherism in fears over “Jade Helm.” Now, it’s COVID-19 vaccines.

What sets the coronavirus vaccine hoax apart from the idea that 5G or GMOs cause or contribute to COVID-19 is that the decision to take a vaccine is a choice. It’s very difficult to avoid both GMOs and cell radio signals, but you can make the decision not to submit to medical treatment. The fact that there’s choice involved allows the body purity arguments and the “Be a righteous citizen of the Republic by being one of the select few who knows the truth” arguments to team up and go looking for Objective Reality so they can break its legs in some dark alley. It also ties to fears about Silicon Valley and the concentration of power in the hands of the few — something Democrats also worry about, of course, but have not widely identified with Bill Gates in this instance.

As for why it’s far more attractive to Republicans than Democrats? Probably some combination of a general distrust of technology, distrust of experts, distrust of perceived liberals, distrust of those who criticize President Trump, distrust of those who have called for continued action to minimize the threat of coronavirus, and a general belief in some quarters that America took the wrong path in dealing with COVID-19. A study in 2019 suggested that populists — who tend to distrust both experts and democracy — were much more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than other types of people. YouGov’s research suggests roughly 24 percent of Americans identify as populists according to their metrics; details available here.

Now Read:

5G Will Not Kill Us All, but Stupidity Might

YouTube Says It Will Remove 5G Misinformation After People Burn Cell Towers

New Coronavirus Vaccine Advances to Phase 2 Human Trials

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/310951-republicans-bill-gates-coronavirus-vaccines-microchips from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/05/why-do-44-of-republicans-believe-bill.html

#Why Do 44% of Republicans Believe Bill Gates Will Use Coronavirus Vaccines to Inject Them With Micro

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