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americangodstalk · 4 years ago

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Notes on S2E4: The Greatest Story Ever Told

# During the flashback to the Boy/CEO background we pass by three main eras. The Pong era, the Game Boy era and the one with the computer (well, one of the first computers). See my Game Boy theory.

# Bast licks the wounds for them to heal.

# Ibis and Jacquel are prosectors. They save tissues for analysis and do autopsies for the county medical examiner (while also being a funeral parlor snce 1863). They found a “niche” during the Civil War, opening up as a funeral parlor for people of color (though of course they did not identify themselves as people of color). Upon being asked about the name Cairo, he only answers “chicke-egg”.

# Odin is against monogamy.

# To meet Money, “the most influential god in America”, “untouchable asshole but his stocks never fall”, they go to Saint Louis, a “big city with big money”.

# It is mentionned that Anansi and Bilquis know each other “biblically” (aka they had sex).

# New Media mentions to Technical Boy that “we need each other”. New Media says that Media “died”, while Technical Boy opposes that Media didn’t die but simply “changed” into New Media.

# When Mr. World arrives, there are numerous electric disturbances. He is of course pissed off at Tech Boy’s failure, saying that “war is won with information”. Technical Boy mentions that he knows a “guy” that own him, in Silicon Valley, and that can provide them with a “new network”. The guy will of course turn out to be the CEO.

# Apparently, Money was born (or at least it is implied by Wednesday) in 1933, when Roosevelt took the dollar out of the gold standard, so that money couldn’t be exchanged for gold anymore. As a result, money became more than a piece of paper - it became a “story”, a “value”, the “greatest story of all” and thus gave birth to the most powerful god of America.

# Mama-Ji is present in all of the Motel Americas across the United-States. It is mentionned that she and her followers (those that practice hinduism) own half of the motels in America. (Is it true? I’ll need to check). The day Kali slew Raktabija is mentionned - however they imply that Odin was here to with her?

# Of course, there are the Penny Scouts.

# The company of the CEO is Xie Comm. New Media manifests herself through screens, holograms and SMS to taunt Technical Boy. The Xie office has in it numerous white faces - later revealed to be the faces of Technical Boy. “I always thought I’d see you again. You will show me something new?”

Let’s note that Xie is a Chinese surname, meaning “immortal” or “enlightened one”, and that the Xie Comm headquarters are shaped as a symbol of infinity.

# Bast is referred to as Thoth’s sister. Bilquis and Anansi apparently know each other “since infancy” (which is... up to debate). Anansi talks about slavery - designing it as a cult. The gods clearly represent here their worshippers.

# Argus is referred to as “CCTV”. More precisely “a relic, a desiccating, necrotising, geriatric, organic sack of redundancies. CCTV?”. Tech Boy mentions that he creates “coltan-encased microchips”, and that thansk to him people carry “trackers” to give up their “locations, card numbers and facial IDs” (interestingly, this is all the things Mr. World knew in season 1). Tech Boy goes as far as make a Jesus comparison with “I have given of my flesh to my disciples”.

# When asked by Shadow if the Penny Scouts give candy, Wednesday answers that he will take them “a gold bar and nuggets”. These are references to money - a nugget is a slang for a pound coin, and money in general in the UK, and is a nod to the “gold nuggets”, while a gold bar is obviously what it is - and a pun on candy bars. The Penny Scouts keep repeating “Credit or debit?”, which is THE question every foreigner in America is puzzled upon hearing because this way of paying is quite unique to the continent - in France for exemple we don’t have that. Odin identifies himself as “Odin the Allfather”.

# Among the Penny Scouts badges you can see the All-Seeing Eye, the American flag, and the sentence “e pluribus unum”. Shadow reveals that he has no debit and no credit in his file, “no trace” whatsoever, and Money apparently hates those that have neither debit nor credit.

# Bilquis says that Jesus was a “rebel” and a “troublemaker” that died because he angered the men in power and refused to be controlled - and for that he became one of the most popular and worshipped gods. As Bilquis says, “he was onto something” - she visibly identifies herself with him or wants to follow his route.

# At one point, the Book of Thoth is mentionned by the other gods - a legendary book said to contain the secrets of all the Gods.

# One should not forget that the speech of Anansi is actually a trick. While he says true facts, he actually exaggerates and change some numbers so that they are a bit higher than the official ones - again, Anansi is a trickster god known to twist the truth.

# New Media shows to the CEO a “pattern”, and while many people were confused by it - if you look carefully enough, a humanoid shape actually appears in this pattern. It seems what New Media shows the CEO is the future Quantum Boy.

# The “face-hugger” makes a new appearance, this time to “retire” Technical Boy.

# Mr. World is offered a “Payback candy” by the Penny Scouts, but Mr. World answers that to meet Money he has “no need to buy candy” because he “retired a god today”. Which grants Mr. World access to a meeting with Money.

# Mr. World says that money is not “cash and gold” anymore but zeros, number sequences, and banks and accoutns with no physical presence”. Money appears as an old man with trembling hands, and while he says that he loves profit, he refuses emotions, and thus refuses to involve himself in the war.

# Mr. World says that he “prefers to be feared”.

# In the credits, it is quite interesting that the man who is identified as “Money” in the episode is actually identified as the “Bookkeeper”. As for the “Son” aka the “CEO”, two of his “childhood” actors are identified - the one for 1977 and the one for 1987.

# Among the badges, well actually the “scout patches” worn by the Penny Scouts, one can see the Chinese Yuan, the Indian Rupee and the British Sterling Pound.

# An interesting point is that the father of the CEO wanted to teach his son faith in the ingenuity and talent of humanity, by showing you the musical works of Bach. But the son only saw algorithms and patterns in the music, and then used a computer to create something identical if not better (in his mind) - because the CEO has faith in technology over humanity. And this is precisely this displacement of faith that apparently led to the creation of Technical Boy.

# Some think that the Bookkeeper only “put up an act” of being a senile old man, asking for the bill, because they note that he is much more serious when Mr. World and Wednesday sit at his table.

# Mr. Nancy mentions that he did not took the deal of the New Gods because it is a rigged one - in fact he equals it to slavery and to its modern variations (human trafficking, prison industry, racial profiling, etc...)

# Many people interpret the line of Mr. World “retiring a god” as basically him having sacrificed a god in order to obtain the favor of the Bookkeeper, literaly doing a sacrifice so that he wouldn’t have to pay to meet him.

# Interestingly, while Mr. Nancy is against peace and says that peace only reinforce complacency and apathy towards oppression, Bilquis and Mr. Ibis answer that suffering and “social ills” are universal, and that waging a war is definitively not the way to change those, because ultimately everyone is equal in front of death and all could end up killed.

#american gods #season 2 #the greatest story ever told #new gods #old gods #money #mr. nancy #bilquis #mr. ibis #mr. world #technical boy #new media #ceo

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spirit-science-blog · 4 years ago

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Let us begin first with the Demiurge. The Demiurge is an ancient Greek and Gnostic concept describing a consciousness that is essentially the creator of the physical reality, but not the supreme creative force behind all things.

An excellent way to explore this idea is through the Matrix, a Science-Fiction story that suggests everything we think we know of as the real world is nothing but an illusion, a false world within which most are imprisoned, unable to identify what is real effectively. As people go about their day to day lives, they think that their world is real, but every individual is plugged into an artificial reality severed from the real world. While people suffer, there is a tremendous benefit to the ruling overlords, who were a form of AI in the film. As it relates to us, this AI is, in essence - the Demiurge.

The Demiurge was described as a force, a deity, or a consciousness responsible for creating the physical world. However, in a way, it had imposed itself over top of the actual reality, the supreme oneness that created all things. In this, it was a false god who had assumed authority over the world, masking the living beings - namely us - from the supreme truth, the highest order of creation, and making us believe that what we experienced as real, the physical reality that we’re a part of, was the actual, authentic reality. Depending on the school and belief of the different Gnostic Sects, the Demiurge was seen either as something evil, deliberately trying to deceive us, or something that was merely ignorant or misguided of its place in the universe and of the rest of creation, which led to us becoming lost in the illusion as a result.

Said in simple terms - the Demiurge was the force behind the physical universe. Still, within our consciousness, so long as we perceived that physical to be real, we were slaves to the illusion of the false or at least incomplete reality.

To that end, these ancient people, at least those who were a part of the old mystery schools, believed that the physical reality was an illusion. They sought to liberate themselves from the illusion of reality through varying spiritual practices, from meditation to plant medicine ceremonies and everything in-between, to connect with higher realms of existence, and break free of the false world by finding the truth: the supreme oneness within. This is because even the demiurge and the physical universe still stemmed from the ultimate oneness, and the light of Truth could be found within. Known to the Gnostics as Sophia, meaning Wisdom in Greek, it was the act of awakening this divine spark within us to return to the higher realms that were the ultimate goal of many Gnostic Schools.

This is where we find the roots of Enlightenment and like-concepts from around the world, which teach that within this world of suffering, we can release ourselves from the illusion through various forms of mastery and self-discipline (physical, emotional, mental). This, of course, takes considerable effort and intention to do so. In essence - transcendent people do what is hard, and that’s why their lives are comfortable. People in suffering do what is easy, and that’s why their life is hard.

Fast forward to today, there is a tremendous volume of voices from across the internet, exploring ideas, concepts and sharing a metric-buttload of memes. But amidst the voices of the masses, we find a new concept emerging and being discussed in scientific and even some mainstream circles… an idea that proposes that the entire universe as we know it is a hologram or a simulation of some kind.

Scientifically speaking, if we look at the cosmos from the perspective of quantum mechanics, there is a general acknowledgment that we don’t understand the universe like we thought we did. We are seeing the building blocks of the universe, the subatomic particles, the waves, behaving in ways that do not make sense in the context of Classical Mechanics, which reveal discrepancies in the laws of physics. Yet, physics laws still stand and apply in a practical sense when talking about our macroscopic world, but the fabric of the reality that we live in operates by rules we have yet to uncover.

The holographic universe seems, in principle, to be very much like how you might expect a movie and a projector to work in tandem. When you watch a movie, you enjoy it linearly, going through it one frame at a time, usually at 24, 30, or 60 frames per second. The stories on the screen follow a narrative of some kind and generally speaking, there are definite laws that make-up the universe you are experiencing in the film.

Yet, the quantum world, on the other hand, is like observing the entire film, timelessly at any point, which includes zooming in on individual frames, playing things backward, forwards, the sequels, the prequels, all at the same time. The particles and waves that make up our reality are non-linear and could potentially imply notions of retrocausality. While they also follow their own set of laws, they are different from the world. We exist at a macro level. Another example of this is computer code. What you see on your computer or phone screen at any given time is a filtered projection of what is going on underneath, designed to be easy for you to interpret.

Yet, under these machines' surface, there is an incomprehensible computer language to nearly everyone. Languages like Binary and Machine Code are too simple to make complex algorithms effectively. Instead, programmers use ‘higher-level languages’ designed to be understood by humans to write code that is then translated into the lower, base-level machine code, then binary at the bottom. When you look at your phone or computer monitor, what you see ultimately comprises mountains of ones and zeros that lay under the surface of the digital world, just like what is under the surface of our reality.

You might be familiar with the ancient wisdom teaching, As Above, So Below. A concept that applies on several levels, describing that which exists in higher realities is a mirror of lower realities. With machine code and binary, ultimately, all of that computational code is equal to and actively creates the digital experience on your devices, but they are two entirely different paradigms.

This is the great challenge of modern science today, unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity because we are unable to comprehend yet how the physical world with tangible substance, continuity, gravity, life, time, and consciousness emerge from this flux field of quantum information, which appears to operate by a very different set of laws related to statistics and probability. Yet… are they so different?

The question then becomes, as many are theorizing today - could our entire reality be nothing more than a simulation? An artificial reality that our consciousness is plugged into? Some oddities have been captured on camera that some people believe are glitches in the matrix. Maybe it’s fake, who knows, but we do have this curious clip of a bird perched in midair without moving before flying away.

There was also news footage from Russia many years ago that someone caught an individual levitating on camera, but when the guy with the camera called out to them, the girl dropped down and ran away. Now again - I’m not trying to say this is hard evidence of a real-life matrix, but it indeed compels curiosity, and this is what it’s all about - humanity living in the question, in the mystery of life, and these strange occurrences that beg us to ask the question… What is the true nature of reality? Now on that note, I encourage you to please do your research, go down these rabbit holes for yourself, and make up your mind! In this way, you become a conduit of free thought, rather than following in the herd mentality of that which has been established for you by the powers that be. Even if physics laws as we know them today say that this is impossible, we also understand that physics laws are incomplete. We don’t even know how to fit Gravity into our standard model of physics properly… Perhaps unlocking these secrets will change everything for us.

And this brings us to the primary key of our conspiracy theory of everything, the basis from which everything to come will build off. The demiurge is, in essence, a lesson about the illusion of reality. As we conceive it to be, the entire world is based on what we perceive with our physical senses. A limited experience of the totality of that which exists in the whole universe. This idea suggests that this illusion of the cosmos is incomplete, and as long as we believe in only it by itself, we too shall remain incomplete. We live within a material universe, but there is more to the cosmos than just that, and as long as we choose to believe in this false reality, we will continue to perpetuate its existence. Only by embracing what we don’t know and asking the right questions can we begin to break free of the constraints that bind us.

In the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean, there is a great deal of discussion that describes the human soul as a light trapped in a veil of the night, a metaphor suggesting that the night is the illusion of separateness, the soul disconnected from the supreme oneness, or trapped in illusions in general… basically, anything that is not the highest truth. It is the unilluminated mind that actively creates the reality that it perceives to be real. As such, humanity lives out its days in the darkness, veiled in the illusion of one's own beliefs, disconnected from a higher reality.

This was portrayed excellently in Marvel's Dr. Strange when Steven denies anything beyond the material universe and then is shown a glimpse of the multidimensional nature of reality and that thoughts are things. He shows that we steer the reality field by our conscious intention, but as we become complacent in creating our lives, we give up control of the driver's seat, and who then is driving the ship? Anyone, and everything else. Jung called it the collective unconscious, the collective mind-field of everyone whose thoughts and feelings influence our very own decisions and actions by calculating their energetic weight. Whether it be the media, the news, advertisements, what your family or friends tell you, or things you happen across on the internet… Ultimately, all of it goes into our egos, shaping who we think we are, as we disconnect further from the nature of our being.

So the question then becomes, what IS the truth, what is the higher reality, and how do we connect with it? The ancient wisdom teachings describe that the quest for wisdom, or enlightenment, or the true nature of being - is a continuous journey into the unknown, and the illumination that we are active creators of our lives, not merely beholden unto the preconceived patterns that we’ve been following in.

The great truth we must understand about the demiurge is that we are the ones who actively perpetuate its existence by believing in the physical universe as the ultimate reality. Your beliefs shape the truth that you experience, as Dr. Bruce Lipton has demonstrated through his work with The Biology of Belief - the thoughts and ideas we hold in our minds can be scientifically proven to affect how our DNA and Cells express themselves.

If you believe you are a lowlife with nothing going on and will die alone and miserable, guess what kind of life you will lead? If you think you can change the world, imagine what kind of life you will lead? To break free of the limitations that we feel are imposed upon us, we must first believe that it’s possible to do so. We must open ourselves to a greater truth, a greater reality, one that is beyond the demiurge, and perceive a cosmic truth that forever changes life as we know it…

Yet, humanity is not paying attention to messages like this in mass, and there’s a reason for it. It is a very significant and critical thing. This one piece of the puzzle must be resolved for humanity to truly advance as a species and break free of illusion collectively…

Our journey down the Rabbit Hole is only just beginning…

#spirituality #science #ascension #mystery school #spirit science

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primummobile · 5 years ago

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✨⭐️ HBO’s ‘Succession’ + astrology ⭐️✨

(Pt. 2)

Connor

💫 Aquarius ASC:

💫 ‘I don’t care. I just observe. I’m a UN white helmet.’

💫 ‘Did Dad ever talk to any of you guys about cryogenics? [...] Wouldn’t that just be typical: all the other billionaires are strolling around in new bodies, except Dad, because we were too embarrassed to actually discuss it.’

💫 ‘So listen, my ranch is completely safe from biological or chemical attack. These are your friends, right?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘You’d all be welcome, pre- or post-apocalypse.’

💫 ‘... generally speaking, people don’t like you.’

🌞 Virgo:

🌞 ‘... I can fix anything.’

🌞 ‘The signature coccktail? Too avant-garde. [The servers] put pesto in the gin—it’s a disaster.’

🌞 ‘Complacent! You’re fired!’

🌞 ‘We should talk to some girls.’ ‘Little tip: Ask ‘em where they were on 9/11. If they don’t know, they could be under 21.’

🌞 ‘Safeguarding 30.000 acres of wilderness, that’s nothing? Being on the verge of settung up a podcast on Napoleonic history with a considerable level of investment interest, that’s nothing?’

🌞 ‘Well, it’s not for public consumption. I mean, this is from my readings.’

🌙 Taurus:

🌙 ‘It’s sourdough starter. [...] I thought that you might like to make something.’

🌙 ‘I don’t know how to say this, except to say that love is a strange and peculiar affliction. It’s—it’s like a virus. So could you please just stay here for a while... and maybe you’ll catch it?’

Kendall

💫 Leo ASC:

💫 ‘All right, all right! Morning morning morning. Hey hey hey! My people.’

💫 ‘You know sometimes you leave the party and you wonder what everyone’s saying about you?’

💫 ‘Well, I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m the man—but if there were a man, hypothetically, he might look a lot like me.’

💫 ‘I’m a good guy who knows the bad guys, I’ve got reach and I will fight for you every fuckin’ day. I’m the asshole who can be your Warhole.’

💫 ‘You see? You can’t even fuckin’ say it.’ ‘I can—I can... say it.’

✨ Aries MC:

✨ ‘Oh, come on man, fuck off.’

✨ ‘Oh, right, ‘cause you like playing boss?’ ‘That’s... not—’

✨ ‘I just wanted to let you know that your pecker’s in my pocket. Dickless dickleby.’

🌞 Capricorn:

🌞 ‘Do you want to call your dad?’ ‘Do I want to... call my dad? No, I don’t want to call my dad. Do you want to call your dad?’

🌞 ‘Who’s the top dog in this hospital?’

🌞 ‘Hey, you deserve this. Seriously. After everything.’

🌞 ‘I literally have something unmissable.’

🌞 ‘You’re doing jokes?’ ‘Why does everyone keep saying that? I’m funny.’

🌙 Pisces:

🌙 ‘S-Soft? Are you kidding? I did a fucking year in Shangai.’

🌙 ‘Experiment successful. I am interested in becoming a meth head.’

🌙 ‘I feel like this is synchronicity. Yeah? Like the universe is telling us something.’

🌙 ‘But for the world? Nah. I’m sorry. You’re not made for it.’

Roman

💫 Gemini ASC:

💫 ‘Hey sis, politics still boring the living shit out of you?’

💫 ‘This is fun. It’s a game. Jeez, stop being so serious.’

💫 ‘You’re not a serious person.’

💫 ‘Um, look, man, I’m dumb, but I’m smart.’

💫 ‘What? It’s a funny joke. ‘Dad’s got cancer’. What’s not funny about that?’

🌞 Leo:

🌞 ‘I wanna run the damn show. I do.’

🌞 ‘Can I suggest we all take our shirts off? [...] They can write a fucking algorithm to run this place, but that’s not the answer, that’s not... us.’

🌞 ‘Did you hear the way he talked to me?’

🌞 “The Biggest Turkey in the World’—it’s not a good film, Greg. When [Roman] was at the studio he tried to stop it, but the jerkies overruled him.’ ‘Oh. Well, although, it did make Roman and everyone more money.’ ‘That’s not the point, Greg.’

🌞 ‘Yeah, he likes me. People like me.’

🌞 ‘The entertainment has arrived.’

🌞 ‘Rome, you couldn’t get a job in a fuckin’ burger joint, let alone a Fortune 500 without some nepotism.’

🌙 Cancer:

🌙 ‘Should we call Mom?’

🌙 ‘Okay. I’m coming to get you, man.’

🌙 ‘What is this, fuckin’ crank?’ ‘We’ve been having a lot of fun, Mom [snickers].’

🌙 ‘I just want to say I think it’s for you to know, as general council, so you can, um... protect me?’

Shiv

💫 Capricorn ASC:

💫 ‘Yeah, you know, I’m burying the bodies, counting the cash.’

💫 ‘Why would I [help you] when I’m giving away power? Why would I do that?’

💫 ‘Oh, the fucking water-works? Is that it? Are you gonna fucking cry now?’

💫 ‘I know that you’re hard and you’re tough, but I just want to get in, I want in, I want in on you.’

🌞 Sagittarius:

🌞 ‘Wtf is this, McCarthyism?’

🌞 ‘If [an infidelity] does [occur], we’re both grown-ups. [...] nothing’s gonna happen, but, you know, things happen with travel, so...’

🌞 ‘In terms of the relationship, I’m just wondering if there’s an opportunity for something different from the whole box set death march.’

🌞 ‘If we own all the news, I do wonder where I’ll get my fucking news.’

🌞 ‘Fuck... Congress, Rome?’

🌙 Sagittarius:

�� ‘I can’t talk about it. I’m upset. [...] I’m not doing this [Moves to the other side of the room].’

🌙 ‘I’m looking forward to [the wedding], but I just can’t get into it all, all the details.’

🌙 ‘We should be good people.’

#succession #astrology #team kendall

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theshubhamjhunjhunwala · 5 years ago

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"The only thing millennials have in common is superficial organization. They want to live in that lie and think they have accomplished a great deal. But, to live in chaos and confusion is an intoxication for which you will live to be alive".

Even though I am a mongrel of the millennial culture, I proud myself in saying that, yes, I, somewhat, belong to the category of "careless" and "superficial" existence, but, I am "old school". Millennials, in general, often seek suave and glamour in anything they do or will do. They often use technology to support their beliefs and actions. For example, if a millennial jumps to write poetry, perhaps, he/she would use their smartphones or laptops. However, in my head, I think and plan things in a way that technology is the least inclusive. On similar lines, I use a pen and a paper to write my poetry. They often forget the power of that simple thing for which, a century ago, things were original and powerful.

Yes, we belong to a generation where everything is linked to a complex algorithm. We think cryptically more regularly than with simple thoughts. And, in that maze of computer codes and softwares, we never come to a conclusion. Yes, curiousity is necessary, but, to what extent? The world is dying slowly and in vain. There are hints of wars and famines around the world and our restricted intellect calls it growth. In a time, when inventions and ideas were discussed in gardens and between forests, we now think of it in a cubicle. Is that what you call creativity? Is that what you can liberty? Between four walls, we are forced to create art and that art is nothing but a product of our comprehensive stagnancy.

For what it's worth, it is not wrong and not entirely callous for a millenial to be what he/she is, but, synthetic conversations and plastic choices don't have meaning. It is not a good idea to hide behind that superficiality only to call himself/herself a paragon, a whole being. For when they talk, for when they choose, a sense of originality should follow. Moreover, how long can you keep this up? How long can you hide? Things before were different. When people claimed something, when people conversed, there was a depth in their words, there was a clear meaning. That was how ideas were born - from meaningful exchanges. Every invention that we have called our own, is a sub-topic of those debates for which men and women talked to the moon and listened to the stars. However, different varied influences and the penetration of technology has changed the course of the system.

Now, in our generation, the most influencing factors are audios and videos. Keeping videos aside, for that is a conversation piece in itself, music is something that people around the globe, of all age groups, revere and draw inspiration from. So, if I were to tag two songs in this post, one for which we have labeled it as music, and the other which I call art, which one would you rather listen to? Which one would give you a sense of satisfaction? That's the thing about music, the mere stand for which once it was created and later it was commercialized, it lost its touch and the feeling hidden behind the rhythm. With technology, our taste has changed variedly, only because now, we have more options. It is not bad to have different, multiple options, but, the power of its influence is shifting to something I would like to term as 'Narcissism'. Everyone knows, well, everyone understands that if one thing fails, if one song gets old, there are a million ideas on which he/she can fall upon, there are a million other songs that will satisfy their whim. Before, when opportunities were limited, in every field, people committed to it, understood it completely, and then, had an opinion. Now, with multi-layered chances, we are casual and we are complacent.

I know that there is no single idea behind this short write-up but I want to raise a few questions for which everyone is liable to answer, or rather introspect.

Is technology converging or diverging?

Has music lost its credibility?

Do millennials need a different approach to exist?

Old School or modern approach?

Will this trend, "vibe" worsen?

Here are two songs:

If you are reading this line, you know the category to which you belong.

#millennials #80s music #music is magic #trending #ignorance #syntheticbeast #classical music #fake #Spotify

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404fmdtaejin · 5 years ago

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lyrical verification ; that’s okay

summary: coming back from the retreat, a man’s forced to rethink how he’s lived his past twelve years after speaking with his mother. a moment of reflection and solitary thoughts confining him to face how to climb up from the grave he’s dug. warnings: none wc: 1171 (not including lyrics)

“you’ve done well, my son.” her words don’t crease at the edges, no. it’s like a perfectly flattened and unscathed piece of blank paper — words sheathed with her honesty. “i’m proud of who you are, and in an odd way — i’m glad you never intended to take over the family business.” and a laugh muffles its way, hazy and static, through the phone.

“thanks.” but it’s not an eulogy to his life for his life has only become the crumbling remains of getting by — an easy pass that free floats through each obstacle that’s thrown in his path. his legs step over easily, arms grabbing each item he desires, and he’s never had a taste of what it means to suffer.

“i have to go, i have a meeting with an american business associate. i’ll talk to you later, i love you my son.”

and the phone call ends as fast as it began. quick and swift with scattered words.

a glass of resin-stained whisky balances between his fingers, minute waves swinging back and forth with the flick of his wrist, and all he has in front of him is the same blank screen that masks itself as a sheer - you’ve done well.

another sip that stings his throat raw, and he finds the notes of his phone open — empty and mocking with each blink of the screen.

he thinks of the first time the youth of year nineteen brought — a fresh face in a relentless industry, and he vowed to only seek the top. trespassing each boundaries, piercing his heels in those deemed vulnerable. each tear plucked and collected, added to the elixir he called ‘unheralded fame.’

it comes like a rollercoaster of emotions — the cliche of up and down, swerving viciously. happy highs and sad lows — everything in between as he raises his arms in the air, uncontrollably flinging around with each jerk. twelve years and he stands high and mighty, yet. many nights he’d find solace in the covers of his bed, tears that couldn’t become a physical presence but more akin to a mental bereavement reminding him of the concept of feeling distanced from the fame that breached higher by the moment.

How far have I come now I ran, only looking forward Now I’m scared to look back The words I've postponed

the words come easy with each movement of his swift fingers across the screen, and like time passes, he’s left with the rumination of the fragments of his past. feelings of emptiness, losing the youth that was traded away for the applaud of a roaring crowd and gleaming chants of the fans, and shimmied away by set of the moon. he sent each one on a silver platter, pecked away with the mangled tinges of what he was expected to be.

was he destined to be great? or was he destined to lose it all? he’s balancing a finely lined limbo, inside a place of primed expectations and fervent desires to pluck himself apart from the path paved in diamonds for him. time passes, and he remembers fragments of each memory — hazy happiness and gruesome loneliness. chest numb and pulled inside out. the sun rises and the sun sets, and it’s the end of another day — merging together monotony that canvases throughout twelve long years.

Like time passes, inside of me Times when I'm happy, days where I cried so much my chest went numb Like the sun that rises and sets every day And the moon, I send them away naturally

does he know who kim taejin is? the formative years of the early twenties — the freedom to explore, make the rash decisions that pummels itself into self-disparities. yet, all he’s left with is what he’s expected to feel given a time and place like a premeditated algorithm in which the answer bides itself written in the question. and he’s given himself up, everything he entails to hide any trace of weakness left inside the troubled heart he carries.

it’s easy to wear a mask, polished up a frame that’s meant to present in front of a crowd of bystanders who only buy the physical locks of transient touches. and suddenly, he loses his touch of being a human who makes mistakes and stumbles through a darkness, only possessing a shadow from the spotlight that shines down on him.

I feel like I'm losing myself in the Many emotions that have gone by From some point, I became used to The rules I follow to hide my heart

but what he wants to say becomes something different. he wants to present forth a human in every aspect. a man who cries, a man who laughs. a man who garners all emotions, and doesn’t situate into a complacency of a silhouette nor a puppet pulled into place by the strings on his back. pain. loneliness. happiness. laughter. it’s a conglomeration of failed expectations shifting the spotlight away from the role he fills — something less daunting, and more human. maybe, what he wants is to follow his heart, a cliche again, and stop concealing the scuffs of his presence.

because he’s a man who makes mistakes, a man who previously seethed terror from every carcass that he viewed. now, he realizes it’s only become a mask to add an extra layer of protection for when he falls off the high ground he stands — lonely and unbalanced.

Sometimes I cry Sometimes I laugh I have expectations And I go through pain I get butterflies once again And become dull Following my heart, the way that I am

and when he writes the rest of the words, he falters at the last sentence. the way i am — the way he was, was that really a notion of realism? he asks himself if the faltering child born with a golden spoon in his mouth was really a culmination of any taste of realism. because in reality, it phases itself to be a ploy, constantly on the edge of apprehension and skepticism — a sham.

and when he turns around to face the recoil of his decisions, taejin realizes he’s always been in the same place — alone.

yet, is there a complete ablation of an instance to change? no. maybe. there’s another vow to extend an open arm and soothe the wounds he’s etched onto others. a tyrant at best, giving into each weakness of belittling insecurities. and maybe, actually. he accepts for the first time, it’s okay to be okay — there’s no necessity to rush to be the best. no reason to jump ahead, spreading yourself thin to jump upon those embedded in the separate warfares of their own battles. because at the end of the day, everyone was a soldier already embittered by years of flinging ammunition in the destruction called life.

Like the countless stars I’m always in the same place I'll shine on you with all the light I have So don't hide yourself, will you show me you? Be comfortable with the way you are That's right, it's okay to be okay

he sees his reflection in the glass, a tilted chin and an empty gaze with relaxed brows that pierce straight through — the first moment of face to face honesty. a lift of a brow, and an awkward smile, he does everything to shift. yet, it continues to become a painted caricature of awkwardness, and for the first time, seeing his own reflection becomes an arduous task — a diverted gaze to the corner of his apartment, he can’t see himself anymore. so, he continues on with the open notes on his phone, logging in the moments of rarity that impeach his semblance tonight.

Today, for the first time I face my honest heart Even looking in the mirror is hard Why is this facial expression so awkward?

it’s okay, he tells himself. maybe it’s okay to allow the loneliness to linger, or the awkward tension of unsheathing an image of the unrecognizable person you’ve become. it’s okay to observe because ten minutes of unshakable uneasiness passes in the course of years. becoming raw. becoming vulnerable — a stepping stone into the age old trope of coming-of-age. this passes, and it transfigures itself into something greater — a lesson to learn. it’s okay to just be okay.

The loneliness that's stayed hidden inside Let it linger for a little Just look at it If the soft breeze blows Open your heart, the day will pass It's just okay to be okay

greatness or being above the raging waters of a storm was just wishful thinking. the fear of being okay, decent. sub-par average becomes less unnerving with each word of honesty typed away. and he recognizes, thirty one years into his life, that being okay with being okay is the apex of letting go and merging into the uphill rise of something promising.

#fmdverification #the only verification taejin will ever get

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xrprainmaker · 5 years ago

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The Significance of Being Insignificant

What is the value of one life? Do you know? Is it measured in how many people's lives we affect while we're alive, is it quantified by how much money we leave to our loved ones when we eventually all at one point or another die? Is it merely the number of loved ones we know or who knows us? Is it measured by how many likes and retweets and shares we get accumulatively on all social media platforms and when we get to the pearly gates of heaven or in some cases the rusted gates of hell going to be just yet another algorithm of the universe held over our head as either a badge of honor or Scarlett letter of failure in which even in the afterlife we will still be either praised or shunned for all the things we've either done wrong or right.. and God or the Devil Themselves will take turns choosing teams in purgatory & just like in middle school we'll either be chosen first with the "cool kids" or be picked last like the outcasts some of us already feel & we'll spend another eternity pondering the effects and affects of our decisions and thoughts and actions until we literally just become dust underneath their nails? These are the questions I ask myself in a world where killing has now become an open sport and done by people that swore an oath to protect our lives and the lives of the ones we love & the ones we don't. But for George Floyd he's life was no more meaningful for those cops that day, than the ants they probably crushed under their boots on the way to go put their knees in his throat and his head. The watched and continued draining the life from his body like a smartphone addict who just watches his or her phone drain to zero battery but is too lazy to get up and plug it into the wall. Did that police officer think he was playing a level in Grand Theft Auto? Did the surrounding policers officers who also complacently just "followed" orders and also held down & pinned him by the legs and arms and allowed this act to be committed without thought or hesitation did they also think they were "doing a good job " or were they just not thinking at all. You see you might be confused right now why I'm talking so much about the "Evil Cops" and why I'm not raving about "defund the police " or talking in a way that I have lost compassion for the cops, instead of just shooting from the hips and calling them Murderers ( which don't worry, I do believe all of them are and should go to jail, as I believe all of them are 100% guilty) . Because let's be clear - to watch and do nothing for 8 minutes straight while somebody begs and pleas " I can't breath", " I can't breath" " I can't breath" and is not putting up a fight or intoxicated or belligerent or on drugs but is just one human being begging for another human being to take notice & show compassion & acknowledge that that person is seen and heard and valued and to watch that for eight whole minutes is almost an eternity of time for those cops to have done the right thing or as Spike Lee would've said in Public Enemy " Dooo Thaaa Right Thang" and they failed, they failed with flying colors. I don't know what they got on their test scores to get into the Police Academy but to get out of it, they went out with a Bang of F's that's for sure. But I digress, the real reason I'm so interested in why NOBODY did ANYTHING even though they were in the middle of the street, broad daylight and with hundreds if not thousands of people walking by and NOT ONE, NOT A SINGLE ONE except One girl who filmed the whole thing and put it up on Youtube - tried to save this man's life or question the cops that were so nonchalantly breaking the law in plain sight, right in front of everyone's nose and the reason why it happened It's because the value of someone's life in Real life - not the after school special you watched growing up or on the multiple motivational videos you can binge-watch on Youtube or "feel good" movies on Netflix where you watch a movie with 1 black actor in it in a cast of 500 white people and pat yourself on the back because you're not a racist. Or because you don't actually call black people the N-word to their face but lowkey wonder what it would feel like if you did. Like would it be laughs and high fives like on the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" or would you get knocked the FUD out like if you were in the ring with Mike Tyson and he's biting off your ear. You see racism never went away or stopped, it just got brushed underneath the rug or the fabric of humanity we like to refer to as the "Human Existence". People like to use the word " I didn't Know" a lot in society - ever notice that - it's like the fewer fuds you give about life or the people around you the more accepted you are. Our world or simulation, whichever way you want to spin it, is built on the combined premise that showing emotion or compassion or crying is something that only "Weak" people do or a sign of weakness. But I call BS, I think that if that's the type of world you want to live in - then DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT, be walking in marches, with your fists up in the air, pretending that you have any type of allegiance with those who have lost their lives from racism or police brutality or any type of abuse for that matter where one party was "Stronger" and abused of the situation on somebody they deemed to be weak either because of gender or skin color or because they grew up on the wrong side of the tracks - Do not think that your 1 white fist in the air publically can magically erase the millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of other unknown fists that took that same symbol but in private and in the horizontal position & punched through the walls of the heads or the walls of the ribs of so many other innocent and unsuspecting lives of both young and old, white & black. That so many don't even know about and that, we'll most likely never know about because they did not have the money in their wallets or the special contacts in their phone or special certifications on their walls saying that they were somebody to be respected and thus the fight for their lives and struggle to share the truth will be buried among so many others that " lead quiet lives of desperation" as Thoreau's once said. You see what I'm getting at here is until we stop shaking our hands in frustration and anger and hatred and hostility at this police officer who did this, we will never truly understand what drives a man or men to this point of no return. Where their souls have left their bodies long before they'll ever be declared dead and how they were allowed to not just roam the streets but to rule the streets with a clad iron fist and destroy anything and everything they touched because they themselves, can no longer feel. You see this to me is the even scarier part. I'm not happy that George Floyd is dead or that he had to die this way, but in reality, if those cops hadn't killed him, how they did George Floyd would just be another African American Man that led a quiet life of mediocrity instead and now his face and his name is known all over the world and his legacy that he will leave to his family in some un-ironic, ironic way because of all of this will be of nobility and peace even though he was caught trying to buy things with fake money and that's what led the cops there, to begin with. To me, this just goes to highlight every relevant rule of life of Yin and Yang and that even in the best people there is bad and even in the badest people there is good. To me is this right or is this wrong to say, that's not up to me to decide, but it's the truth and the truth is hard to digest for many because it's not like a placebo, laced in sugar and will slowly rot your teeth and your brain. It's like a shot of Tequila either your system can handle it or it can't but either way, you'll only find out once you try. Try to see things from different angles, try to listen to a different perspective and try to understand, that no one is born 100% evil, I believe that evilness is learned and that even though the absolute last human beings on the face of the earth that you or many others would deem worthy or deserving of compassion right now or a voice or somebody to listen to them, I would say, it's that cop/cops that killed him. Why? Because as heinous as it is what they did, is that I also envision those same cops as young kids, running and playing and laughing and waiting for the weekend to play "Cops and Robbers" and how do you go from that level of innocence to this? Was it a gradual chipping away at their souls like water drop Chinese societal torture device, or did something cataclysmic in their youth or adult years happen like their father or uncle showed them how to hunt a deer when they were just 8 or or or... You see to me " an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" or in this case and many, many, many other unsolved cases- it's worth a literal pound of flesh and until we as humans and society start truly asking these hard questions, of ourselves and all other people who make up this world, we're just fooling ourselves into believing change is happening or that #BlackLivesMatter - because black lives won't matter until #ALLLivesMatter - including the lives of these horrible - soulless police. Rest In Power Mr. George Floyd

#george floyd #george flyod dead #george flyod protests #defundthepolice #rest in power #rest in peace #xrprainmaker

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comp6841 · 6 years ago

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Tutorial - Week 2

One of the first activities we did in the tutorial was another cryptogram puzzle - unfortunately I had got to uni early and already did the puzzle before the class started. I feel like I’m getting pretty decent at these, however I’m not sure how well I would fair in the situation where I don’t even know where the spaces are. I think this was given actually as a past midterm question, however it was a permutation cipher I think.

Case Study - Houdini

We were presented a theoretical scenario in how we could use Houdini to determine which mediums are legitimate. Basically the situation involves a medium who would be speaking to the spirit of Houdini, and his widow would need to determine the legitimacy of mediums from the messages they provide to her.

One of our initial ideas as a group was to use a characteristic message that Houdini would tell his wife he would say after his death. However, we decided it would be more secure for him to encrypt all his messages with a key that he tells his wife before his death. However we ran into an issue with this approach - it was still vulnerable to a replay attack. If in theory, some mediums are legitimate, then how could we tell which ones are? They could just repeat decoded messages of other mediums. The solution to this is pretty simple - you can just include a timestamp or pick a really large random number (a nonce) and increment 1 every time you send a message. (inside the encryption, of course). Some of other solutions suggested were interesting too - for example, you could just use a hash to verify the integrity of the sender and data.

MACs

In practice we use these hashes in message authentication codes (MACs) for ensuring data integrity across network transmissions. Basically a hash function is applied to the message to produce the MAC; then this is transmitted alongside the message to the receiver. The receiver then computes the hash of the message and compares it to the MAC - if they are the same we have data integrity. A timestamp or sequence number is usually included in the message itself in order to prevent replay attacks.

Social Engineering

There was basically a lengthy discussion regarding how we can trust no-one. I would argue the fact that trust is key element involved here - it is our misplaced trust in a system, group or individual which leads to our complacency and vulnerability to social engineering. For example, consider the case of identity theft which may not necessarily sound like it falls under this subcategory. In order for your information to be stolen you must have misplaced your trust in a system, whether it be a company which stores your data or the security of your own home office.

Some more complex (by that I mean lengthy) cases of social engineering were discussed such as “deep state agents” planted in other countries for surveillance. The question was posed, how do we ensure they remain loyal to their cause? This links back to the human condition again; what is it that drives as individuals. I would argue the best way to approach this problem is to provide both incentives for completion of a task and deterrents for non-compliance. These rewards and punishments should closely link to our ability to achieve our own personal ambitions.

Surveillance State

One of the cases posed to us was how would we proceed with the surveillance of an individual walking towards a four-way intersection. How do we achieve our goal without ‘spooking’ the individual? The main idea was to make sure everyone watching would be blending in perfectly with the surroundings. Consider the case in which a spy is following him; the man stops, what must you do? In order to appear normal to the man, he must keep walking (and past him) even though he may no longer be able to watch the individual. This doesn’t mean he can go out of character as soon as he is out of view - he needs to appear as a normal citizen to every other person who may come in contact with the individual. Otherwise it may compromise the operation - it is almost like a chain reaction; for example if person B witnesses person A behaving strangely, it may change the behaviour of B around the individual which may spook him.

I think one of the ideas to take from this study is that you always need to be thinking multiple steps ahead. You need to have a broader view when it comes to security and think of the bigger picture - could making a small change to an algorithm in one location throw the security out of line in another section? I could also just be doing my 1am round of overthinking things - I guess you could argue that it could also be an analogy to malware as well. How do you detect malicious software without it realising your trying to find out how to disable it?

Threat Modelling

I’ve been advised that this will be discussed in lectures soon but we briefly did a bit of threat modelling. Basically the idea behind this process is as follows:

Identify all your important assets

Identify the actors which may want to access / take the assets

Determine methods the actors could use to access / take control of your assets and devise methods to defend against these

For example, let’s say my browsing history on 4chan is a very valuable asset to me and I’m “unreasonably” paranoid that government security agencies desperately want this information from me. I think we can agree that fully protecting against this threat is probably impossible, but one step we could take is to divert traffic through a number of proxy servers.

#week2 #tutorial #analysis #reflection #groupwork

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kkintle · 3 years ago

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The Mathematics of Love by Hannah Fry; Quotes

Mathematics is the language of nature. It is the foundation stone upon which every major scientific and technological achievement of the modern era has been built. It is alive, and it is thriving. As the physicist and writer Paul Davies puts it: No one who is closed off from mathematics can ever grasp the full significance of the natural order that is woven so deeply into the fabric of physical reality.

Real science is about trying as hard as you can to disprove your own theories. The more you try, and fail, to prove yourself wrong, the more evidence there is to suggest that what you’re saying is right.

This setup is known as the “stable marriage problem,” and the process through which the friends picked their partners is called the Gale-Shapley algorithm. If we look into the math behind these couplings, some extraordinary results appear. Regardless of how many boys and girls there are, it turns out that whenever the boys do the approaching, there are four outcomes which will always be true: 1. Everyone will find a partner. 2. Once all partners are determined, no man and woman in different couples could both improve their happiness by running off together (for example, Phoebe might still have eyes for Ross, but he’s happy with Rachel). 3. Once all partners are determined, every man will have the best partner available to him. 4. Once all partners are determined, every woman will end up with the least bad of all the men who approach her. The last two points demonstrate a particularly surprising result: In short, the group who do the asking and risk continual rejection actually end up far better off than the group who sit back and accept a suitor’s advances.

But for all the extensions and examples, the message remains the same: If you can handle the occasional cringe-inducing rejection, ultimately, taking the initiative will see you rewarded. It is always better to do the approaching than to sit back and wait for people to come to you. So aim high, and aim frequently: The math says so.

The problem is that we don’t really know what we want until we find it.

This is all fine at the beginning, but as the auction (i.e., life) continues and the lots are won by the weaker bidders, a situation arises with only a few decent men left and a much larger number of beautiful and intelligent women all fishing in the same shrinking pool. The result is the eligible bachelor paradox, and it comes with a clear, if slightly harsh, take-home message: No matter how hot you are, if your goal is partnership, don’t get complacent.

Just by adding this one simple step to the algorithm, we increase our chances of finding the hub to four out of five. Much better odds. The same would be true of much larger networks. Imagine that, without being able to see any of the network or follower statistics of Twitter, we were trying to find Katy Perry—the biggest hub at the time of this writing. If we picked someone at random from the 500 million people on Twitter, we’d only have a one in 500 million chance of finding Katy. But, if we picked someone at random and asked them to point us to the most popular person they follow, it would take us to Katy a cool 57 million times. Suddenly the chances of finding Katy soar to around 10 percent, which is pretty impressive given how simple the algorithm is.

When dating is framed in this way, an area of mathematics called “optimal stopping theory” can offer the best possible strategy in your hunt for The One. And the conclusion is surprisingly sensible: Spend a bit of time playing the field when you’re young, rejecting everyone you meet as serious life-partner material until you’ve got a feel for the marketplace. Then, once that phase has passed, pick the next person who comes along who’s better than everyone you met before. But optimal stopping theory goes further. Because it turns out that your probability of stopping and settling down with the best person (denoted by P in the equation below) is linked to how many of your potential lovers (n) you reject (r), by a rather elegant formula: This formula, innocent as it seems, has the power to tell you exactly how many people to reject to give you the best possible chance of finding your perfect partner.

Thankfully, though, there is a second version of this problem that is much more suited to mere mortals like you and me, and it’s got an equally impressive result. Instead of knowing how many people you’ll date, the advanced problem only requires you to know how long you expect your dating life to be. The math in this example is much trickier,2 though the same simple rule as earlier crops up again—but this time, the 37 percent applies to time rather than people. Say you start dating when you are fifteen years old and would ideally like to settle down by the time you’re forty. In the first 37 percent of your dating window (until just after your twenty-fourth birthday), you should reject everyone; use this time to get a feel for the market and a realistic expectation of what you can expect in a life partner. Once this rejection phase has passed, pick the next person who comes along who is better than everyone who you have met before. Following this strategy will definitely give you the best possible chance of finding the number one partner on your imaginary list. But, a warning: Even this version of the problem has its flaws.

To decide on the best table plan, it’s important to first define what you mean by “best.”

#Hannah fry #the mathematics of love #love #mathematics #non-fiction #books #quotes

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years ago

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How Pandora Won Its Royalty Battle But Lost the War to Spotify

For a few years in the late 2000s, Pandora was the on-demand DJ for tens of millions of people, creating the soundtrack to college dorm room parties, quiet coffee shops, busy kitchens, and family get-togethers. The days of building massive MP3 music collections through file-sharing was receding quickly into the past, and instead the shared experience of radio was making a comeback via the clever algorithmic matchmaking of Pandora's endlessly customizable stations based on individual taste. Today it's a feature we take for granted across every music service, even if Pandora's implementation still seems like it was the best. Pandora itself, however, can feel like an afterthought. Betamax to Spotify's VHS, or maybe more accurately, MySpace to on-demand streaming's Facebook.

It's not that Pandora was oblivious to its competition, or complacent about its place in the industry. It was, however, an innovator in digital music at a time when the major labels were hostile to the entire concept and would fight on every front to preserve the lucrative of the compact disc era. To take on this legal and lobbying juggernaut, Pandora needed a clever strategy to avoid the kind of head-on fights that had sunk Napster. The solution was the radio model of music licensing, a brilliant strategy at the time, but one which would be the subject of a long fight between Pandora and the recording industry. Pandora would win that battle, but in doing so, it also found itself stuck with a business model that could not evolve alongside the streaming space.

Pandora’s personalized radio service took the FM listening experience, put it online, and exploded the typically narrow path to music discovery for millions of people. It was the first real introduction to digital streaming music for a lot of America’s population in the mid-2000s. People could type in a song or artist they liked and get a never-ending stream of related music.

On the surface, at the listener level, the magic was in how all the songs were linked and connected. Behind the scenes, the magic was in how Pandora was able to provide access to all these songs, without asking the major labels for permission.

Radio broadcasters don’t have to spend exorbitant amounts of time and money trying to license every song from major record labels: they only need to pay a small fee each time songs are played. So after developing its music discovery technology, the Music Genome Project, Pandora went into radio to take advantage of the same licensing agreements already in place.

The Tower Records "music discovery center" powered by SavageBeast / mockup courtesy of Dan Lythcott-Haines

For Joe Kennedy, Tim Westergren, Jessica Steel, and Tom Conrad, the four Pandora executives leading the company's rebirth as a digital broadcaster in 2004, this was the only path forward. Radio was the path to profitability in the music industry.

“It was already clear to us that most of digital music was a disaster from a business standpoint,” said Former Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy. “At that time the four labels didn't want digital music to really exist, but we found this one piece in internet radio where there was the statutory license that, I felt, gave the potential to create a business of value and avoid this phenomenon one board member referred to as an organ donor business — where you just exist to funnel money to the major record labels.”

As a quick background, Savage Beast Technologies was founded in 1999 by Tim Westergren and would later become Pandora. The company spent years developing its Music Genome Project music recommendation engine to help people find new songs and artists similar to their existing tastes in music. It powered a few in-store kiosks at Best Buy and Tower Records, but the Music Genome Project itself never found a viable market fit. In 2004 Larry Marcus and Walden Venture Capital’s lead investment saved the company, starting a new chapter. Jessica Steel joined as VP of Business and Corporate Development. Tom Conrad came into engineering, but quickly rose to Chief Technology Officer. Founder Tim Westergren moved from CEO to Chief Strategy Officer and Joe Kennedy was hired to be the company’s new CEO.

UI mockup courtesy of Dan Lythcott-Haines

Kennedy got to work on a new business plan and put the pieces together to pursue radio. Looking at LaunchCast’s success (a similar service to Pandora, which would later be acquired by Yahoo), along with potential market size and fixed costs through the statutory license it was their path towards profitability for the startup.

Pandora launched its personalized radio service in the second half of 2005 paying a per performance rate of $0.000762 each time a song was played.

The Battle Over Rates

Pandora and other webcasters were paying song rates from the 1998-2005 timeframe. By the fall of 2005, Pandora was already too late to officially participate in the hearings happening to assess rate adjustments for the next period of time. Kennedy did, however, stay connected to how testimonies to the Copyright Royalty Board were progressing. The CRB was created under the Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act of 2004 with three permanent copyright royalty judges.

There were several different groups and sides presenting their case for what they wanted, one of which was the Digital Media Association (DiMA) representing 42 companies including AOL, Live 365, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AccuRadio LLC. Another, representing the entrenched music industry, was SoundExchange and executives from Atlantic Records, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and other labels. Mixed in were groups identifying as terrestrial radio, small webcasters, large webcasters, commercial, non-commercial, and so forth. There was plenty of nuance to the companies and groups wanting special considerations to the rates they would pay.

SoundExchange and its side argued for 30 percent of gross revenues from webcasters or a performance rate beginning at $.0008 per performance in 2006 and increasing annually to $.0019 by 2010, whichever was greater. It wanted the rates to be as high as possible.

The DiMA group wanted a fee structure of either $.00025 per performance or 5.5% of revenue directly associated with the streaming service. For a lot of these internet companies, music was not their main business, but an ancillary one.

Tim Westergren, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Pandora Media Inc., center, Steven Newberry, president and chief executive officer of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Corp., left, and Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs with CTIA Wireless Association. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, June 6, 2012. Credit: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Pandora may have entered the music industry a little naively, planning for a world where the statutory rates remained low and they had time to bloom. Even before its plans for radio, it had run out of cash multiple times. In 2000, venture capital dried up fast from the first dot com bubble bust and left the company scrambling for new funds early in its life. Tim Westergren, always the easygoing and formidable guy, never laid anyone off, he simply asked those who could continue working without pay to stay with the eventual promise of reimbursement once new funding came in.

Even after receiving around $7 million in funding in 2004, Pandora didn’t have the capital to either negotiate direct licensing with record labels or the runway to offer free, ad-supported radio. It had to launch as a subscription service to cover some of the costs. But, shortly after launch it secured a large investment by James Feuille and CrossLink to make the transition to free ad-supported radio.

“Fundamentally, I did not believe people would pay for radio,” said James Feuille. “The idea was $3 a month, $36 a year, with no advertising and I just didn't believe you could build a big business like that.”

The numbers from the 2005 launch reflected most people’s reluctance to pay. Pandora radio launched with 10 free listening hours before it presented a paywall and cut off listening to non-subscribers.

“They generated 500,000 users, zero to 500,000 users in six weeks,” said Feuille. “At the end of six weeks, 40,000 people had subscribed, it was .08, not even 1 percent.”

Despite its growth and the excitement it was generating, Pandora spent its first several years struggling to keep the lights on. It had publicly warned of pulling the plug. It was paying artists according to the law — which wasn’t a given in the early days of digital music — but it didn’t think it could afford to have the rates double or triple.

The Night The Lights (Almost) Went Out in Oakland

The Copyright Royalty Board presented its decision in March 2007. Included was a summary each side had been making against the other: “SoundExchange accuses the Services of seeking a marketplace characterized by perfect competition. DiMA and the Radio Broadcasters claim that SoundExchange is championing a marketplace characterized by monopoly power on the seller’s side.”

The three-judge CRB sided with the proposed rates from SoundExchange and the major labels. The new per play rates would be $.0008 for 2006, $.0011 for 2007, $.0014 for 2008, $.0018 for 2009, and a per play rate of $.0019 for 2010.

“It was March 2007, I'll literally never forget the moment,” said Joe Kennedy, Pandora CEO at the time. “I had just come through the tunnels on my way to work in Oakland and Tim [Westergren] gives me a call and says there's a decision out of Washington. He read me the rates and it was like, oh my god, the rates are almost triple. I immediately knew that’s game over, there's no path forward.”

Westergren knew Pandora was in trouble so he immediately spearheaded a grassroots campaign to persuade its listeners to contact their congressional representatives. This effort resulted in the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008 that was able to bring those involved parties back to the table and try to negotiate a different rate settlement. It allowed for a simplified process to amend any deal that could be renegotiated between the parties. Webcasters, including executives at Pandora, were anxious to find a number they didn’t think would put them out of business.

Although the bargaining table had been set again, this time joined by Pandora, there was a significant amount of division among the companies and groups. RealNetworks with its Rhapsody streaming service saw Pandora as a competitor and potential threat. The National Association of Broadcasters saw internet radio as less desirable and profitable and was happy to see it go away or remain small. They were primarily interested in addressing their problem of simulcasting over the internet. Yahoo was an advertising company and so it didn’t want revenue sharing from non-core products to eat at its bottom line.

The labels had the upper hand with the increased rates they had asked for already in their pockets. Plus, negotiators for SoundExchange and the Recording Industry Association of America understood these divides and played them against each other.

As CEO of Pandora, Joe Kennedy was representing it in these negotiations, trying to keep the company on a path to profitability. Pulling out all the stops, Pandora even went as far as to offer private stock in exchange for a compromise agreement. The labels weren’t interested.

“The major labels came back and said, Well, you know, we shared this with our business people, and they took a look at it, and their analysis says, even at the lower rates, there's no chance you guys are going to make it,” said Kennedy.

In its first years as a digital radio service, Pandora and its millions of listeners had become an annoyance to the major labels. Historically, major record labels exhibited all the power in the relationship with terrestrial radio. FM radio was a promotional vehicle for labels to sell their artists. Digital services like Pandora were shifting that promotional power away from the labels with algorithms and user input.

If Pandora continued growing it would become a threat to power and control within the music industry. Circumventing directly licensing music through its use of the DMCA was seen as combative since digital music was already marked as undermining established business. Pandora was scrappy, having already moved Congress into action once, and that was worrisome.

The 2008 Settlement Act didn’t do much when it was signed by Congress. What it did do though was allow for a simplified process for new settlement approvals. The stage was set, if Pandora and its other webcasters could reach a deal with SoundExchange and the labels by the stipulated date of February 15, 2009 then it would go into effect simply by submitting it to the Copyright Royalty Board. There wouldn’t have to be any pre-hearings, public comments, or any of the previously required steps in the tedious process.

Despite Joe Kennedy’s best efforts, the deadline passed and Pandora was momentarily left with a decision. Would it accept a mountain of debt that rose higher as it gained popularity and more songs were played or would it pack it all in and call it quits?

“I wrote an email for the board that night and more or less said, I tried, failed, it's over,” said Kennedy.

Kennedy called Tim Westergren in the middle of the night to let him know. Westergren answered from a bus in Jordan. He was in the Middle East on a congressional delegation with his wife. Kennedy explained that the deadline had passed and negotiations had failed. The previously tripled rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board in 2007 would take effect.

Westergren replied that Congressman Howard Berman was currently on his bus. He would talk to him about the situation and see if there was anything he could do.

Congressman Berman was representing Los Angeles’ 26th district in 2008 and was on the Intellectual Property subcommittee, part of the Judiciary Committee. Congressman Berman had the right connections with people from most parties involved in the entertainment industry.

“I fully believe we had Right on our side back then,” said Westergren. “And I had the perfect timing to just explain the whole story, not the caricature that had been told to him. I think he heard it and said, what you're asking for is fair. Ultimately that’s why I think he intervened.”

“[Berman] called from Amman back to Washington and got some kind of procedure where a page on the floor can open the chamber and make some change,” recalled Westergren. “And because he was Chairman of the Judiciary he had some abilities or power to extend the deadline.”

Westergren called Kennedy back and told him that Congressman Berman said to keep going. This was happening in the middle of the night back in the U.S., a few hours after the deadline had passed. Because of the speed, negotiations didn’t have a chance to unwind from where they were left the day before.

“I immediately got on the phone with two more people,” said Kennedy. “First the point person in the negotiations and then our biggest ally who was with the Independent Music Association. I said, I just talked to Tim, Tim just talked to Berman, and Berman said we should keep going.”

In light of the immediate progress, Kennedy quickly amended his initial email to Pandora’s board admitting defeat, saying everything was over — it wasn’t yet.

“I think by the time the board got the first memo, I'd already sent a second memo that told the whole story of Tim talking to Berman and to hold on because maybe there's still some hope,” recalled Kennedy chuckling.

On July 7, 2009, more than two years after the rates had been set to increase, a settlement deal was formally announced. In the press release, John Simson, Executive Director of SoundExchange, said, “It’s a creative, groundbreaking approach that we wanted to try, and we hope it will work well for everyone involved—the artists, labels and eligible webcasters.”

The new agreement allowed for webcasters to pay per performance rates ($0.0008 retroactive to 2006 and increasing to $0.0014 by 2015) or 25% of revenue — whichever was greater. The per performance rate was a little bit lower, but the introduction of the revenue sharing would help webcasters keep costs in check and plan for the future.

The Power of Tens of Millions of Listeners

Pandora might have been on the ropes when it came to money, but it was a growing powerhouse of influence. In 2009 Pandora had seven million monthly listeners. Five years later in 2014, it had over 81 million monthly listeners. Westergren even attributed its active listeners calling members of Congress in the early days to its new settlement and Pandora’s ultimate survival.

Pandora’s radio service might have just hit at the right time to fulfill consumer demand and grow in popularity. It could have also had the right timing to land in the middle of Apple’s mobile revolution fueling its growth, but the truth is that it spent years working on its streaming backend and engineering so that it could hit it big overnight with the iPhone’s App Store.

Through Jessica Steel’s leadership, the team identified mobile early on and started by putting Pandora on flip phones with network carriers like Sprint and AT&T. At the time, this only resulted in a few hundred listeners, despite the major engineering effort involved. After Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in 2007 it became apparent that this new internet connected, “music player,” device in people’s pockets needed to be the future of its mobile efforts.

After pushback on only allowing web apps for the iPhone, Steve Jobs announced that native apps would be coming to the iPhone. In the interim, Apple Senior Vice President Scott Forstall invited Tim Westergren and his CTO, Tom Conrad, over to a local Cupertino lunch spot. The trio talked for hours about what Pandora had learned about streaming audio from putting apps on flip phones, like Motorola’s RAZR, for wireless carriers. The meeting ended with a question for Forstall.

Credit: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg via Getty Images

“What, if anything, can we do at Pandora to get ready for the next generation of iPhone that includes an app store and native APIs?” asked Conrad. “Forstall said, it wouldn't be a waste of your time to jailbreak some iPhones and use the kind of back door toolkits that were being distributed by other people to build a native Pandora app while we get our act together at Apple on something more formal.”

So, Conrad, designer Dan Lythcott-Haines, and many others on the team got to work jailbreaking iPhones and working on a Pandora iPhone app ahead of the official APK release. Then, on day one of the App Store launch, Pandora was the first internet radio app available. Nine months later the Pandora app was installed on 21 percent of iPhones.

Five years after that first iPhone app, nearly 80 percent of Pandora’s radio listening was on a mobile device. But even with a great mobile experience and ubiquitous access across all kinds of devices into the future, its linear, radio style appeal was encountering pushback from listeners.

“We always knew there was a portion of how people listened to music that we were not addressing,” said Joe Kennedy. “I think what changed over time was obviously the emergence of Spotify, but I think alongside that is not just in music but across the board, people's willingness to subscribe to things on the internet grew quite a bit over time.”

The Spotify Effect

By 2010, after it went through these settlement negotiations, Pandora was fully entrenched in radio. It had gone to court for it. It had become the face of internet radio and was becoming the torch bearer for the idea of radio in a lot of people’s minds. There was a consumer demand for this style of music service but Pandora and its executives were getting locked into the protection and cover they thought the statutory license afforded it.

Pandora was feeling heat from listeners who wanted to be able to listen to any song they wanted to at any time. They wanted more skips and other features that were outside of the statutory license’s scope. This pressure was one piece, of many, that led to Joe Kennedy announcing he would be departing as CEO in 2013.

“There’s many pieces to this puzzle of why I decided to leave,” said Kennedy. “Among them was the natural strain of having worked with the board for a long time, the strain of being a public company, and this very significant pebble in our shoe of what to do about Spotify and the on-demand business.”

Pandora finally launched an on-demand offering in 2017. It took years to repair relationships and get to a place it could work with the major labels. The work started secretly in 2014 which eventually led to Pandora acquiring Rdio’s on-demand licensing deals and other assets in 2015. In exchange for these on-demand licensing deals, Pandora agreed to renegotiating new, direct, radio licenses outside of the DMCA shelter.

Pandora spent the first half of its life chained to and defined by the DMCA’s statutory royalty rates. It then spent the next years not quite sure how to move forward. It saw the terrible financial deals that Spotify was making in order to gain on-demand streaming access to the major label’s music catalogs and didn’t want to be in that same boat. It tried getting into ticketing and events in order to control its own financial destiny, but it didn’t pay off.

“The reason we really did jump into on-demand was more about the porousness of publishing rights than anything else,” said Tim Westergren. “The industry had us in their crosshairs and after a while it's hard to be at war with your suppliers. There was too much potential for publishers to do monkey business and we had less and less confidence in the security of some of these statutory structures. We were vulnerable.”

“I think that we still squandered an enormous opportunity having survived all [those settlement negotiations] by not pivoting to on-demand fast enough,” said Westergren. “I feel incredibly proud and sort of marvel at what we got through, but I also have a lot of frustration about how we let it slip away after we established such a lead.”

The way Westergren describes it, Pandora should have become Spotify, before Spotify had the chance to.

“We should have done what Spotify did and ate a pound of flesh to get the industry on our side, then expanded the scope of the product and then really gone global and become an all-you-can-eat service,” said Westergren.

Today, in 2021, it’s nearly impossible to determine what Spotify pays in royalties per play. How much a song is worth varies among labels, artists, and other complex contractual details — including whether plays come from Premium subscribers or free listeners. The deals remain secret until frustrated artists eventually spill the beans on their own terms and provide a peek behind the curtain. In the end, musical artists continue to be the ones dealt the bad hand. Spotify pays major labels huge financial sums and upfront guarantees while it’s estimated that most artists will see payments of between $0.003 and $0.006 per song play.

Pandora still remains an active player in the music streaming space and counted 58.5 million monthly active listeners at the end of 2020. Depending on which music listener you ask, Pandora is a fond memory of digital music coming into its own, or its radio service may still be a vital part of their passive listening experience. Attention wise, however, Pandora is being left behind as Spotify and Apple Music push faster and further into on-demand streaming, sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

How Pandora Won Its Royalty Battle But Lost the War to Spotify syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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Stocks Rise After Rout in Bonds Subsides: Live Updates Here’s what you need to know: Coronavirus vaccinations at a senior center in North Las Vegas, Nev., in February. Investor sentiment was buoyed after U.S. regulators this weekend approved the use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.Credit…John Locher/Associated Press Stocks on Wall Street are set to rise more than 1 percent when markets open on Monday, following a jump in Asian and European stocks after the rout in government bonds subsided. The S&P 500 index fell nearly 2.5 percent last week but was set to recover nearly half of these losses on Monday. The Stoxx Europe 600 index climbed 1.3 percent, with gains in every sector, and Asian stock indexes closed broadly higher. Over the weekend, U.S. federal regulators authorized the one-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, adding to the positive market sentiment. The Senate this week will begin work on a $1.9 trillion relief package passed by the House on Saturday. Democrats in the Senate, which is evenly split, face political and procedural challenges. Lawmakers are aiming to send the bill to President Biden for enactment by March 14, when unemployment benefits will begin to expire for some jobless workers. The 10-year yield on U.S. Treasury notes was at 1.43 percent, down from as high as 1.61 percent on Thursday. Globally, long-dated bond yields fell from Australia to Britain on Monday. Last week, rising yields and higher inflation expectations led some traders to question when central banks would have to pull back on their easy-money policies. And the Bank of England’s chief economist said central bankers needed to avoid being complacent about how difficult it might be to tame inflation. The prospect of tighter monetary policy knocked stock indexes down from their recent highs, and the Nasdaq fell nearly 5 percent last week as technology stocks lost value. On Monday, Nasdaq futures rose about 1.5 percent. “We do not expect the tech sell-off to extend much further and continue to see value in the sector for longer-term investors,” strategists at UBS wrote in a note. Elsewhere in markets Commodity prices also rose, including oil. Futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, rose 1.5 percent to $62.41 a barrel. Homebuilders such as Persimmon, Barratt Developments and Taylor Wimpey were the biggest gainers in the FTSE 100 index ahead of the British government’s budget presentation on Wednesday, when the chancellor is expected to announce a new mortgage guarantee program to help people buy houses with small deposits. The Bank of Ireland said it was closing a third of its branches, 103 in total, in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The bank’s shares rose 3.5 percent as it announced the cost-cutting measure after reporting steep losses for its past fiscal year. Heidelberg residents who give up their cars can ride public transportation free for a year.Credit…Felix Schmitt for The New York Times Heidelberg, Germany, is at the forefront of a movement: the push to get rid of cars entirely. Heidelberg, a city of 160,000 people on the Neckar River, is one of only six cities in Europe considered “innovators” by C40 Cities, an organization that promotes climate-friendly urban policies and whose chairman is Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York. (The others are Oslo, Copenhagen, Venice, and Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands.) Eckart Würzner, Heidelberg’s mayor, is on a mission to make his city emission free, Jack Ewing reports for The New York Times. And he’s not a fan of electric vehicles — he wants to reduce dependence on cars, no matter where they get their juice. Heidelberg is buying a fleet of hydrogen-powered buses and designing neighborhoods to discourage all vehicles and encourage walking. It is building a network of bicycle “superhighways” to the suburbs and bridges that would allow cyclists to bypass congested areas or cross the Neckar without having to compete for road space with motor vehicles. Residents who give up their cars get to ride public transportation free for a year. “If you need a car, use car sharing,” Mr. Würzner said in an interview. Battery-powered vehicles don’t pollute the air, but they take up just as much space as gasoline models. Eckart Würzner, Heidelberg’s mayor, complains that Heidelberg still suffers rush-hour traffic jams, even though only about 20 percent of residents get around by car. “Commuters are the main problem we haven’t solved yet,” Mr. Würzner said. Traffic was heavy on a recent weekday, pandemic notwithstanding. Some critics, including some ACLU chapters, say facial recognition is uniquely harmful and must be banned.Credit…Ting Shen for The New York Times A police reform bill in Massachusetts has managed to strike a balance on regulating facial recognition, allowing law enforcement to harness the benefits of the tool while building in protections that might prevent the false arrests that have happened before, Kashmir Hill reports for The New York Times. The bill, which goes into effect in July, creates new guardrails: Police first must get a judge’s permission before running a face recognition search, and then have someone from the state police, the F.B.I. or the Registry of Motor Vehicles perform the search. A local officer can’t just download a facial recognition app and do a search. The law also creates a commission to study facial recognition policies and make recommendations, such as whether a criminal defendant should be told that they were identified using the technology. Lawmakers, civil liberties advocates and police chiefs have debated whether and how to use the technology because of concerns about both privacy and accuracy. But figuring out how to regulate it is tricky. So far, that has generally meant an all-or-nothing approach. City councils in Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore., San Francisco, Minneapolis and elsewhere have banned police use of the technology, largely because of bias in how it works. Studies in recent years by MIT researchers and the federal government found that many facial recognition algorithms are most accurate for white men, but less so for everyone else. Source link Orbem News #bonds #Live #Rise #rout #stocks #Subsides #Updates

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0100100100101101 · 7 years ago

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The era of police hiding behind bushes and catching drivers who exceed 30 miles per hour may be coming to an end. In years, maybe decades, the young officer with a quota could be replaced by a robotic cop car.

Unsympathetic to excuses and invulnerable to flirtation, the robot will flash its lights to pull you over. It will scan your driver’s license, decide whether to issue a warning or ticket, and inform you of its decision before letting you drive off.

The concept is outlined in a Ford patent filing for a self-driving cop car capable of using artificial intelligence "to find good hiding spots to catch violators of traffic laws." An optional human passenger could override settings that prevent the car from breaking traffic laws itself.

It’s unclear how far along the idea is in development, but experts and policymakers are grappling with the concept that was quietly filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office more than a year ago before recently attracting widespread attention after a blogger noticed it.

The idea's public airing comes as self-driving technology hits its stride, transitioning from testing to broader deployment for everyday use.

Uber has dispatched driverless cars to cities such as Pittsburgh, with more than 2 million miles driven. Waymo, a self-driving car company owned by Google’s parent firm, has 4 million test miles and plans to start its own ride-hailing service in Phoenix this year. It’s buying thousands of self-driving Chrysler Fiat-built minivans for rapid U.S. expansion.

Many companies have joined the rush. Tesla and Mercedes-Benz are unveiling partially self-driving cars, and General Motors plans to release a fully autonomous car without a steering wheel next year.

Ford, the robot-cop patent-filer, invested $1 billion in the firm Argo AI last year to develop self-driving technology as part of a five-year plan to make thousands of vehicles available for car-sharing and ride-hailing services.

Right now, self-driving carmakers have a fairly free hand. State laws create a patchwork of rules, but may soon be swept away by overriding federal regulation. Congressional lawmakers are debating bills that would expressly allow the vehicles and give the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulatory power over design and safety. For now, voluntary NHTSA guidance seeks to foster both innovation and safety.

Ford declined to comment on the cop car beyond a statement from Alan Hall, communications manager for autonomous and electric vehicles, who said: “We submit patents on innovative ideas as a normal course of business. Patent applications are intended to protect new ideas but aren’t necessarily an indication of new business or product plans.”

Amid technological advances, however, some experts believe real-world adoption of the concept is an almost inevitable.

“A widely-distributed, autonomous police presence is not hard to imagine. We have to ask: Do we want to live in a world blanketed with autonomous police cars?” asked Ed Walters, who teaches at Georgetown University’s law school and at Cornell Tech.

Why fear the robocop?

Privacy concerns, uncertainty about the effect of automation on police jobs, and doubt about robot performance are among the biggest issues raised by people who take a dim view of the conceptual cop car.

The skeptics include Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a former chief of the Orlando Police Department and one of the few former law enforcement officers serving in Congress.

"One of the greatest gifts a law enforcement officer has is his or her ability to use discretion,” Demings said. “Automation has its place, but it could never replace the wisdom, courage, and compassion found in an officer's heart and soul.”

Candace Lightner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said she’s outright opposed to the car, which the patent application describes as being able to use artificial intelligence to detect impaired driving.

“It kind of reminds me of a police state when all of a sudden you could be pulled over for non-dangerous driving behaviors,” said Lightner, who now leads the traffic safety group We Save Lives.

“What if I’m driving along and all of a sudden a dog runs out and I stop? I’m going to get pulled over by a police state vehicle that can’t see what’s going on? I don’t like it at all,” she said.

The Ford patent application says the car “may, through machine learning” recognize impaired driving, including through observation of a “sudden stop, meandering movement, abnormal lane changes or the like.” An optional passenger officer could arrest the driver.

Lightner said she believes police would grow complacent and defer to the technology. That could lead to the false arrest of people who are not intoxicated, the non-arrest of others who are, and a go-to argument against conviction for defense attorneys.

Dave Maass, a researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said such a car operating as a “Roomba of the roadway” — a reference to the automatic vacuum cleaner — would amplify privacy and data-security concerns already debated with police use of license plate readers.

Maass, an advocate for California legislation that would allow covering the license plates of parked cars, said plate readers generally are stationary or on police cruisers, but self-driving cars could collect much greater amounts of data.

Police have put license plate readers near gun shows and mosques, Maass noted, and can use records to reconstruct the routines of people not suspected of a crime.

Offering an example of how automated cop cars might be used, Maass pointed to local police departments in Texas that use plate readers provided for free by the company Vigilant Solutions. The scanners find people with unpaid court fines, and cops give pulled-over drivers a choice: jail or roadside payment, with a 25 percent fee for the company.

“It may result in a lot more prosecution,” Maass added, saying that in the more distant future he worries "that we will get to the point where facial recognition is good enough that faces become like license plates ... and companies track your location based on your bare face. So you take this vehicle — an automated police vehicle — that’s just driving around and grabbing the faces of everyone.”

One hurdle to broad deployment is local laws that require police departments to win approval from elected officials for new surveillance technologies. A campaign led by the American Civil Liberties Union has seen the policy adopted in many areas, including Seattle and Nashville.

“I don’t think it’s inevitable; I think people can make noise about it and let their representatives know,” Maass said.

The libertarians' take

Despite talk of frightening consequences, the idea of robotic policing does have supporters, perhaps surprisingly among some civil libertarians.

Ian Adams, associate vice president of state affairs at the free-market R Street Institute, said “predictability from within policing cuts both ways, but likely cuts favorably overall.”

“You will have fewer pretextual stops,” he said. “Once expectations are adjusted, you will have fewer issues with cops pulling over a car because they don't look like they fit [in a neighborhood] or tailing a car for miles waiting for them to do something nominally wrong.”

In addition to reducing the potential for racial bias, Adams said a recent experience with a self-driving Uber vehicle in Pittsburgh made him realize “public policy will have to evolve” alongside the rise of automated vehicles.

Adams recalls going about 35 miles per hour over a bridge where cars with human drivers were accustomed to driving more than 50 miles per hour.

“You will see reasonability standards put into black-and-white traffic laws,” he predicted, such as a more flexible definition of stopping and a possible deviation from “bright line speed limits.” He believes increased civilian use of self-driving cars over the next few years will force changes in traffic laws before police broadly deploy their own autonomous cars.

Adams, who was involved in California’s legislative process of adopting self-driving rules, also anticipates new rules for data protection. “It’s going to be so much easier to collect massive amounts of information from these platforms,” he said. “But I tend to be less concerned about collection than use.”

Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the vehicles could offer a dramatic improvement over current policing practices.

“This actually seems like an improvement on traffic cameras in one respect, assuming they can make it practical in the field, in that the patent has a mechanism for scanning a driver’s license,” he said. “Traffic cameras typically have to assume that the driver of the car — and thus the person liable for fines or penalties detected by the camera — is always the registered owner.”

Sanchez said, “There are also potentially big benefits for equity, privacy, and safety — for both police and drivers.”

“Having trained police officers who spend their time handing out traffic tickets is a pretty bad use of resources,” he said. “If we can offload the decision about who gets pulled over to an algorithm that only sees data about driving behavior, that’s a simple way to radically reduce both the reality and the perception of ‘driving while black’ stops. For similar reasons, it should cut down on pretextual stops where some minor, possibly imaginary infraction is used as an excuse to detain someone and poke around their car for other reasons.”

Sanchez predicts more safety for the public and for officers. Cops would not have to fear violence from drivers during routine traffic stops, as robots would handle them, and drivers would no longer have to fear “the sort of cop who seems to get a thrill out of behaving like a bully” or “a jittery cop shoots someone during a traffic stop for no real reason,” he said.

“It would probably be better for police-community relations generally if the awkward process of being punished for minor infractions weren’t the most common personal interaction many people have with police officers,” Sanchez said. “On net, this sounds like a good thing on many levels.”

Ford, of course, may not be the only company interested in making a robotic cop car.

“I'm skeptical that this idea satisfies the patentability requirements of novelty and nonobviousness,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a professor of law and engineering at the University of South Carolina and an affiliate scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.

Regardless, Smith said, the idea’s likely to be one part of a larger shift.

“In the future,” Smith said, “the placement of all kinds of inward and outward facing sensors on motor vehicles, aerial drones, and infrastructure — plus the connection of these sensors to the cloud — will enable far more aggressive public and private enforcement.”

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