#i also need to make some more maps and do some interactive data analyzes shit

[sungjinhos]

the fact that i have to finish a bachelor degree and still work on a fucking thesis in the same period is making me slightly crazy not gonna lie

[cockbiteproductions]

multiples of 8, except in the misc section. all even numbers for the misc section

200: My crush’s name is: well well well this question again. you’re not getting anything out of me!!! they fucking use this website!!!

192: I am allergic to: nothing. but i found out like yesterday not everyone gets dermatographia and im kinda annoyed. what do you mean your skin doesnt get red and puffy the moment you touch it......

184: Xbox or ps3: xbox solely because of ah

176: Last YouTube video watched: my watch history says this, which is a scene from a show called billions. this scene in particular is about my favorite character asking about their introduction scene with their former mentor figure that they quickly outranked and asking why they were picked for the internship that lead them down this [entire shitpath].

168: Luck: [long sigh]. [puts on clown makeup].

[obi wan voice] im my experience there’s no such thing as luck. 

[rian voice] luck? there’s probability plausibility and actuality. luck is superstition. luck is lazy math. [winston voice] that’s what i always say.

160: Soul mates: again souls arent real..... nor do i believe that people are “meant for each other” on any sort of cosmic/larger level. you are more compatible with people based on your upbringing and your interests and your values and those are adaptable over time though some people are so different that they will never get along and other people match/complement each other incredibly well.

152: Phone or Online: lmaoooo this questionnaire once again showing its age. throwback to when these things weren’t synonymous. online for sure. what am i gonna do with a phone? talk to someone with my fucking voice? i think not.

144: Oranges or Apples: to eat by themselves? probably apples since they are easier and less of a mess. and apples are more consistently better than oranges. oranges, it’s easy to get a batch that just sucks. juiced? probably orange. i love me some fuckin orange juice. but i like apple cider more than orange juice.

136: Hillary or Obama: lmaoooo again.. the age of this. 2008 or 2012. going to guess 2008. obama but not like. enthusiastically. while he was certainly better than [what we got going on now] he still bombed the hell outta some countries......

128: Manicure or Pedicure: ive never had either but i would probably be more comfortable with a manicure. people touching my feet would make me ticklish.

120: Gay Marriage: the only type that should be allowed. sorry straights youre no longer allowed to get married. /s obviously.

112: Facebook: oh BOY are you fucking ready. are you???? im starting the readmore NOW because this is going to be something. i doubt anyone except robots maybe will actually read my deranged pro-privacy anti-facebook/social media/surveillance rant but im angry every time i think about it and if i were a more important person than a rando on the internet with a keyboard im sure facebook would hire someone to kill me one day.

FUCK FACEBOOK. FUCK THAT SHITTY ASS WEBSITE THAT AT EVERY TURN HAS BEEN REVEALED TO HAVE HORRIFYING PRACTICES OF DATA COLLECTION.

but before that, they need to pay some goddamn fucking taxes. they are profiting off the data of billions of people and getting away with paying SO LITTLE back. 

you ever hear about deepface? no this is not the beginning of a prequel meme. deepface is facebook’s facial recognition technology and facial recognition is fucking terrifying. that shit is as good as humans at facial recognition at this point. does that not scare you? that a bunch of computers can figure out if this photo contains you or not? it’s one thing if humans recognize each other, but another thing when computers who can process data almost infinitely faster than humans can are able to do it. the scale and speed at which these fucking nightmares operates is hard for us to imagine and so we are all not scared enough of what they can do. this kind of technology is so deeply privacy violating it’s hard for me to stress it enough. every image of you ever uploaded on the internet could possibly be put through facial recognition tech. and with the fact that there are cameras literally everywhere at all times now at this point it’s so fucking possible that if desired, someone could find out where you are at all times. and that gets SO scary when used by governments. are you comfortable with your government knowing where YOU are at all times? yes? what about if tomorrow your government is overthrown by a group of radicals you completely disagree with? you still comfortable with that? facial recognition is kind of a fucking pandoras box that we are opening and now that we have the technology available to us, unless we actively take steps back from it, it WILL eventually/already is being used in malicious, intensely privacy invasive ways.

and everything in that above bullet point goes for ALL DATA COLLECTED ON YOU, EVER. everything you’ve ever said on facebook is probably put through some multi layered neural network fucking robot who is learning how to understand what humans say on your input and also cataloging things about you as a person. it is doing SO MUCH more than reading the exact text of what you are saying and then picking up on keywords. neural networks are an attempt to copy how humans think by making an artificial version of a brain basically. in simple terms it’s a map of points and connections and you feed it data for a while and tell it what the desired outcome should be. it will adjust those connections and the weight of those points based on your data and expected outcome. that change in connections and weights is how it learns. then after a while it has fed on enough data that it will begin to expect what your desired outcome is. now imagine millions and millions of connections and points. it’s fucking huge. you ever hear about how we don’t know how machine learning/deep learning/neural networks works? this is that. it’s because they are so large and they have changed their weights and points so much that we no longer understand how it makes its decisions. ml is on a deeper level starting to understand what you mean when you say words. like a human. and can pick up nuances humans cannot because of its perfect memory. do you understand how scary this is? do you? i really do not know how to express this better how absolutely buckshit wild and terrifying the idea that everything i say online can be scraped and put through a robot and a profile on me and who i am and my ideals can be gathered almost instantly. how hard would it be to write a scraper that goes to my blog and grabs the text of every post in my talk tag? and then there’s free and open source nlp software (or you can pay for it) and you can feed in everything ive said on this blog ever. you can go to my facebook. you can go to my twitter. you can find my profiles on every online platform ive ever used and take everything ive ever said and determine what kind of person i am based on that. and then you can then make further distinctions based on that data. (sidenote: facebook wouldnt have to scrape the data on my profile, it’s all in their databases already. they have everything ive ever posted on public or private, on my old profile i’ve deactivated, every photo ive posted or been tagged in, everything ive ever uploaded to their servers or have been associated with.) and someone or robot can make decisions about me based on that data. it could just be am i likely to buy [this product] or it could be something much more like am i a threat? am i dangerous to you, the person using this data about me? what are my politics? what are my views on [this topic]? are they too extreme? should i be denied [real life thing] based on what this machine has determined about me from my data online? not to sound fucking crazy, but you ever watch that episode of black mirror? nosedive? and its system where you can rate interactions with people? how this one girl was trying to increase her ranking so she would qualify for a cheaper price on housing? how we’re already starting to see things like this in real life with china’s social credit system?

call me a fucking wack job but i think it’s so deeply creepy that we have digitized so many aspects of our lives and leave machines we no longer understand how they make their decisions to analyze every bit of data about ourselves.

by the fucking way facebook tracks data on people WHO DO NOT USE FACEBOOK. FACEBOOK TRACKS DATA ON PEOPLE. WHO. DO. NOT. USE. FACEBOOK. are you scared? i am.

i’ve been thinking about this tweet from @/malwaretech on twitter from a few days ago. text: On a serious note, social media tracking is more extensive than you may think. For example: those Facebook 'like' buttons you see on every website? They call home. If you're logged into your FB account, it records that you visited that web page, even if you don't click 'like'. doesn’t that sound a lil fucked up to anyone else? that facebook knows that i visited that webpage even though i did not tell it? that it will use that data to build a better profile on what my interests are and that it will use that data to better sell ads to me? i’ll be honest i am unsure of if facebook sells that information to other vendors. i think that might be not allowed but i wouldn’t be surprised if that data somehow got into the hands of people who arent facebook.

the fact that for the longest time you could NOT get your data deleted from facebook? that even if you deactivated your account facebook would still keep all of that in their shit ass servers forever? as far as i know, that’s changed now, but i would not at all be surprised if the next day it was revealed that facebook was Actually Keeping all that info anyways

the fact that by default facebook’s privacy settings are set to allow anyone to see most info about you? just this whole opt out culture is so fucking wack. it should be opt in. your privacy settings should default on the MOST PRIVATE and it should be up to you to ACTIVELY SEARCH OUT how to change them to public. it is ON FACEBOOK to actively cultivate privacy but of fucking course they don’t.

lmao cambridge analytica politics russia brexit trump. i don’t have the energy to even open this fucking can of worms but i will say that again, another layer of deeply fucked up that political campaigns can use that data to try to coerce or influence elections.

do you remember when in 2019. yes twenty. fucking. nineteen. 2019. two thousand and nineteen. 2019. i dont know how more to stress how recent but late this is. 2019. facebook admitted that it and instagram were still. STILL. STILL. S T I L L. storing passwords as plaintext? meaning your password that is “password123ilovedogs” is stored AS “password123ilovedogs” in their database. it is STANDARD AND EXPECTED PRACTICE that websites store SECURE hashes of passwords (not like fucking. md5 or something) meaning you do a bunch of fucking “irreversible” math on the password and store that instead of the actual password itself. so the db would be storing “298!79v@w8W#R;3,f9jf” instead of your actual password. anyways face. fucking. book. was storing passwords as plain text. which means if they ever have a data breach on their passwords db then all that data inside will just be your actual goddamn password. your actual goddamn password. what the fuck? what the fuck? and we still use this website? we? me? i use this website daily? i use this website on a daily fucking basis and allow it to continue to collect information on me? im so goddamn angry.

the fact that now in this day and age you are considered weird for not having any social media? super fucked up. the fact that employers will check your social media and if you don’t have one that is somehow a red flag? weird as hell. why must we participate in the world’s largest data collection scandal ever just to be a member of society? i cannot choose to opt out. facebook collects data on me even if i do not have an account. society expects me to have some form of social media and if i do not then that i am the weird one for it. if you choose to live a life of trying not to be tracked it is almost impossible. can you live your life in modern society without an email address? without a smartphone or laptop? there is an expectation that every person is available to communicate with digitally and if you find the practice of data collection abhorrent and don’t want to use websites that do so, then you’re the weird one who has a LOT of society’s services unavailable to you.

im not going to even touch on the psychological effects that facebook and social media have on people other than to ONCE AGAIN, say they are very real and deeply fucked up.

by the way check out haveibeenpwned. enter your email and it’ll check against databases to see if your email has been on recent dumps. i have been. lately there have been a few older accounts of mine that have been breached and it’s terrifying.

fuck jesse eisenberg man he fucked over spiderman crazy

fuck faang. fuck big tech. fuck data collection. btw edward snowden is a hero. fuck all of this.

104: The future: man we’re in for it. i am not optimistic about it at all. too much tech progression / not enough foresight / expansion/globalization of the world / global warming / political and economic issues are all coming to a head to make the world a fucking disaster.

96: Changed a diaper: never done it! i am not around children often.

88: Something I will really miss when I leave home is: having a vague idea of where things are locally. im very bad with directions.

86: The thing that I’m looking forward to the most: answered already.

84: People call me: yeesa, apparently. i have a fair amount of nicknames but i just call myself teresa.

82: I have gotten a speeding ticket: sure haven’t though i deserve one

80: The first person i talked to today was: soph​ because she wakes up at a normal goddamn time so i’ll sometimes have a text from her from a few hrs ago

76: Right now I am talking to: milo and a discord server im in for a group of friends i made when i was applying to college. though i havent responded in quite a while since i went on my angry facebook rant.

74: I have/will get a job: well i HAD a job for the beginning of the summer when i was a TA but i do not any more as that was first summer semester only. hopefully in the fall i’ll have a job as a TA again but who knows. and then after that when i graduate i hope hope hope hope hope i will have a job lined up.

72: Today: woke up. made a plum smoothie. played minecraft. took a nap. here i am. it’s all very riveting.

70: Next Weekend: it’ll happen for sure. odds are i will be waking up and eating food and coming on the internet and chatting with friends and doing a bit of writing and trying to learn a bit more html.

68: The worst sound in the world: answered already.

66: People that make you happy: will roland lmao. 

64: My friends are: well it’s basically the same people i tagged in my last post on people who make me happy.

62: My School: you tryin to doxx me? it’s alright. not the best for my major. and also stupidly trying to reopen for the fall because theyre greedy and idiots. it was like my 5th choice school but it is what it is.....

60: I lose all respect for people who: already answered

58: Your hair color is: black as fuck. im east asian.

56: Favorite web site: controversial but archive of our own dot org i guess. i believe in their mission and like how they have advocated for fans and have created a fan-owned space on the internet. they’re not perfect but i overall support them.

54: The worst pain I was ever in was: answered already

52: My room is: a time capsule of what i liked in late middle school/early high school.

50: Where would you like to be: im fine where i am. maybe visiting friends though. i would like to Hang With Them and Do Fun Activities.

48: Ever been in love: who’s to say....... what is love? (baby don’t hurt me). but for real the concept of love is weird to me, especially romantic love. i don’t know. i’ve certainly obsessed over people. i’ve noticed i kind of “pick people” to have crushes on. i can’t really say why. but then it creates a feedback loop of i pay more attention to them -> i think more about them -> i like them more. so i’ve made conscious decisions that have lead to me obsessing over people.

46: More guy friends or girl friends: girl but that’s just because people in fandom spaces tend to be women and most of my friends ive made through fandom.

44: One person that you wish you could see right now: kaity is coming to my town but we cant see each other because of a pandemic so im kinda fucking miffed about that. i didn’t get to see maria before she left my state so i’m also miffed about that.

42: Have you made a list of things to do before you die: lmaooooo no. i would just like to be satisfied with my life. would like to see friends. do fun things with them. 

40: Last person I got mad at: idk im not generally a mad person. mark zuckerberg probably.

38: I wish I was a professional: as in i suddenly have all the skills and talent needed to be a professional? i think a director &|| writer tbh. i would love to have the Creative Vision necessary to come up with dope ideas AND translate what i have in mind into real life. i would love the ability to be able to tell compelling stories that mean a lot to people.

32: Athlete: lmao if it was 2008 or 2012 i would ahve said ryan lochte but nevermind. idk. maybe katie ledecky.

24: Movie: am not much one for movies...... star trek 2009.

16: Book: i don’t know how to read.

8: Yankee candle scent: idk about yankee candle specifically but i love the smell of apple. 

[danseru-kun]

Ancient and Android Chapter 2

FFVII and DBH crossover fanfic (Aerith x Connor)

Ao3 link: Ancient and Android

Genre: Friendship, Drama, Romance (?)

Rating: Teens and Up

Chapters: 2/7 (tentative)

Summary: At first it bothered Aerith how humanlike Connor was in appearance. Were androids like him part of the Lifestream?

Chapter II- Stress

INITIALIZING…

SYSTEMS ONLINE…

Resolution of the image was sufficient for facial recognition. Reflection and texture of the surface ahead indicated that the subject was behind 0.75-centimeter glass.

Blinking mechanism activated to clean lenses.

Female identified: Amanda Stern.

Audio processors functional.

Amanda laid her hand flat against the surface.

It scanned the size of her hand, the length of the fingers, and the pressure of the palm against the surface. It zoomed on the fine prints, the ridges, and folds that make the body part unique than any other person in the database. It imitated the human and placed its hand against the glass as well. Against the human's dark-colored hand, its part was a little bigger, made of smooth, white silicone. It was different.

"You have made some excellent progress." The woman smiled and moved her face closer against the glass, her nose almost touching the surface.

Emotion analyzed. Happiness? Satisfaction? Wonder?

"RK800, #313 248 317 - 51, I have a surprise for you. It's time to register your name."

"My name is Connor, I'd like to help you cross the street." With a little nod and a smile, the elderly human reacted favorably to the android. Her body language was relaxed rather than alert, taking Connor's hand and accepting its offer to help carry her grocery bags.

"Thank you, son." She beamed with a toothy grin as she joined a group of aged humans. The facial recognition scans did not yield any record of the old woman in any database and Connor added her under its unidentified list. "What a lovely young man, do you know him."

Humans reacted positively to a gentleman: polite, refined, respectful, and empathic. Based on 121 direct interactions with humans, the most common responses upon learning Connor was a machine were the following: surprise (96%), disbelief (74%), curiosity (63%), and amusement (53%). Most emotional responses were considered neutral according to its social program. When Connor was unable to disclose the information that it was an android, responses were more varied.

Connor heard some giggles beside him: five female juveniles were whispering to each other, their faces displaying the emotion of happiness, and cheeks darker in color. Blushing was a common human response for attraction, embarrassment, anger, or high temperatures. Connor gently smiled back and the girls ran away, making high pitched noises.

0:03

0:02

0:01

Connor picked a spot beside an unopened store to transmit the report uninterrupted. The previous reports resulted in the interruption of traffic and hostility of pedestrians.

Stress level: 55%

The order was transmitted 72 hours ago: Prioritize Sector 5. However, Connor had only produced 53% compared to the same timeframe in Sector 8.

Amanda gave her a reply: Inefficient.

Stress level: 67%

The lower foot traffic and economic activity could explain the gap, but Connor was programmed to find solutions. Progress was necessary and the following objectives still remained:

1. [ENCRYPTED]

2. Identify and report suspected Avalanche members

3. Search for information about Avalanche's hideout

4. Collect data for Shinra profiling initiative

Profiling based on age and focusing on key areas such as the marketplaces, hospitals, transportation would improve the likelihood of finding Avalanche affiliated persons. Emotional motivation would also be a strong factor: individuals who originated from Wutai, Gongaga, and Corel could harbor some anti-Shinra sentiments. Added filters on audio processors would detect regional accents to identify targets. Humans tend to form communities with others that shared the same culture and language.

After a long list of new directives, Connor added another objective: Maintain a positive image in the Sector 5 community.

The store called "Aquamore" finally opened its curtains, revealing several aquariums. Connor identified 26 different species of the 342 fish displayed. A lone goldfish inside a 10.24-gallon bowl caught Connor's attention. The animal's large eyes stared back to the android as it desperately swam against its barrier. Its bowl was too small and only 42% of the optimal volume of water. Was it aware that there was nothing beyond? Even if it was aware, would it continue swimming ahead? Connor lightly tapped his finger against the glass and watched the fish's reaction to the stimulus. "Don't jump out," Connor whispered.

Stress level: 56%

Connor concluded that the maps of Sector 5 were inaccurate and outdated. Unlike Sector 8 with concrete roads and traffic signs, Sector 5 was a maze with urban planning nonexistent. The roads on the government-provided maps were unfinished, steel bars jutting out, and asphalt peeled away. Sidewalks were occupied by illegal structures, open sewers taking their place in some areas.

At 9:21PM, the volume of people on the streets dropped. Most humans had already retreated back to their unstable shelters - tightly packed and lacking in privacy. Only 65% of the street lamps were functional, straining the android's visual processors. The lights from the plate were too high and underpowered to touch the ground.

A noisy splash and change in elevation alerted Connor. It looked down on the leather shoes provided by Amanda: no longer clean and shiny, now caked in greasy mud.

Stress level: 60%

Connor reached another dead end. It was the third point in the map that needed updating as inaccessible. The destination, however, was not pointless. Large, neon-green letters delivered the message: SAVE OUR PLANET. DOWN WITH SHINRA!

Whoever painted the graffiti left some fingerprints. No traces of DNA.

"Shit, it's true. It looks so much human," a voice called from behind the android. Seven humans, all-male, approached Connor.

"Hello robot! We're friends."

"Does it understand you?"

Connor stood in a formal posture, fixed its tie, and clasped its hands together. "Good evening, my name is Connor. How can I help you?" Four of the seven humans had criminal records- mostly robbery, and trespassing.

"Hi, Connor, I heard you're fixing like.. electric stuff," one slowly approached while the others had their hands behind their back. There was a 64% likelihood they were concealing some weapons. "Can you take a look at my house?"

Sympathy was necessary and Connor adjusted his eyebrows to imitate a troubled human. "I deeply apologize if you're experiencing some inconvenience, but I am afraid I'm authorized to make repairs myself. May I know your full name and permanent address?" The man didn't answer.

"It's unarmed, just take it!" One person from the back shouted out and the rest

Another revealed a baseball bat. "Matt, get the van now!"

"Hey, hey! Don't damage anything, just hold it down."

With the intent made clear, Connor had to decide in 2.4 seconds.

1. Use gun for elimination: 100% fatality. Estimated time: 5.3 seconds. Conflicting priorities. Violence would result in a negative image to the community.

2. Use gun to injure limbs: 18% probability of fatality. Estimated time: 11.2 seconds. Conflicting priorities. Violence would result in a negative image to the community.

3. Escape: 13% success rate.

4. Reason.

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

Aerith happily skipped with an empty basket at hand, her pockets heavy with bills and coins. It was a perfect way to end Friday night. It wasn't only the sold-out inventory that brought happiness to the woman, but the beautiful smile of the bride as she marched with a full bouquet on her hands. Her soles were sore after a full day of work, but her mind and body felt refreshed as if she had a good night's sleep.

Sometimes Aerith would get a reminder by her mother to spend more money and treat herself. On good days she rewarded herself with a few drinks at bars or cafes, meeting with friends and sometimes new people. Tonight seemed perfect to spend at home with a warm bubble bath, hot tea, and a lavender-scented candle beside her.

A loud honk startled Aerith, followed by glaring headlights. "Watch out!" She screamed, evading the vehicle just by mere inches. Muddy water splashed against Aerith's face, soaking her pink dress and her bra. She quickly turned to glare at the offender, taking note of the license plate.

Just a few meters away, the white container truck shook, skidded and rolled into a ditch nearby. Aerith's anger quickly dissolved and changed into worry as she ran to investigate. The vehicle dove headfirst with wheels still turning. Thankfully the water was too shallow for anyone to drown.

"Hey, anyone there? I can help you," Aerith called out, peering down. There were noises inside the truck, sounding like grunts and curses, followed by a violent knocking at the back. Whoever was inside was desperate to get out and Aerith quickly descended.

As soon as Aerith turned the knobs of the container, a man kicked them open and climbed out of the truck. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were wide in fear. Aerith almost didn't recognize him without his jacket, but the glowing LED circle on his temple was a dead giveaway. This time, it was red and spinning wildly. "Connor, is that you?"

"Aerith," he acknowledged between breaths and ran past her.

More men climbed out but with bloodied noses and busted lips. They ignored Aerith and chased after Connor with crowbars and baseball bats.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing? I'm gonna call-" Aerith warned to no avail to the group. These lowlifes made the slums unsafe, forcing others to live in fear. Her own heart raced and anger bubbled from within, spreading heat to the tips of her fingers. Aerith gripped her staff and channeled her power.

She might have shorter legs but she knew how to overtake them. A few shortcuts and pipes to climb was all it took for Aerith to climb on top of the smaller buildings. With the vantage point, she could track the group easier and Connor can be distinguished in the dark with his red circle. The android was fast but he seemed injured - one of his arms limp on his side.

Connor collapsed and landed face-first on the ground. How it happened was unclear to Aerith. He convulsed while four of the attackers surrounded him.

"Hang on!" Aerith cast a gravity spell to aid her landing, right in the middle of the group, Connor behind her. "Leave or you'll regret it." She warned as she pointed her staff.

"Who the heck is this girl?"

"She's the flower seller."

They laughed, winked, and gave her flying kisses. "They never take me seriously," Aerith muttered and rolled her eyes. Men think they're creative with their endless flower innuendos. This was not the first time and will never be the last. "Counting three…" She charged her weapon with lightning, materia resonating inside her sling bag. "Two and one!"

Aerith planted her staff on the ground and the lightning flowed towards the targets, stunning them. Four men fell on the ground, some of them twitched and groaned in pain. They were fortunate that soil wasn't the best conductor - well at least from the very little science Aerith remembered from school. They could have suffered burns if she didn't hold back.

"Get out, all of you." She ordered the first one who recovered, whipping his legs with her staff. He ran off to the dark and the others followed. They hurled insults at Aerith as a final attempt to preserve their pride. "Ya'll trash!" She spat back.

Connor still laid on the ground stiff as a rock, his chest wasn't moving. "Hey, hey are you okay?" The woman noticed a wire attached to him and pulled it off. She never held a taser in her hands before. "Oh no," Aerith flipped Connor to face her. His eyes were opened but lifeless, but the red LED ring didn't stop spinning.

The man's eyes moved and blinked. "Hello, Aerith." He greeted the same manner as they first met - very polite. "I suppose I have to thank you for helping me."

"You weren't breathing…I thought you-" Aerith exhaled, tension leaving her body. She stood up and allowed the cool night air to calm her nerves, hoping that her heart would stop racing soon. Suddenly she was aware of how much mud there was on her clothes and her that her pockets were lighter. So much for a good Friday night.

"I apologize for worrying you, but I do not breathe." Connor pulled his limp left arm and re-attached it to his shoulder socket. It sounded exactly like cracking bones. Aerith winced but the android did not express pain or discomfort. Connor folded the edges of his sleeves and buttoned his half-opened shirt. His tie was missing.

There was a lump in Aerith's throat as upsetting images flooded her mind. "Why did they attack you?" More questions piled inside her mind, but she would rather not ask for specifics.

"They were talking about selling my whole body off to a Don or selling me piece by piece. They were in the process of dismantling my arms when I fought back," he said nonchalantly as he stood up. Connor was too calm it was unsettling.

It wasn't like that earlier. Aerith remembered the fear in Connor's eyes. "Are you alright? Do we need to go to some doctor-" she frowned. "Mechanic? Engineer?"

"Thank you, Aerith, but no need. How about this: I can walk you home if you like? As a form of gratitude."

Aerith shook her head. "But are you okay?" she asked again, looking at Connor's eyes directly, trying to find any hint of emotion. Something was wrong and she could feel it. "That taser is set at the highest voltage. You could have died."

Connor was silent for a while, his LED spun red briefly and turned to yellow before it settled again to blue. He smiled at her gently, eyes warm and kind. "I am not alive. Please, do not worry about me."

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

The jacket was necessary to identify Connor as Shinra property and android was able to retrieve it from the crash site intact. Like the rest of the uniform, Connor concluded it needed washing to be socially acceptable.

Stress level: 88%

Numerous warnings appeared in Connor's feed as the stress level remained above the optimal level. The core temperature remained higher, necessitating the breathing mechanism to help cool off its biocomponents.

Connor continued to walk through the streets alone at 2:11AM, scanning the homeless and drunks that passed its way. The incident earlier resulted in a loss of productivity. Without sufficient numbers, Amanda would deem Connor as inefficient.

Stress level: 91%

An intoxicated woman walked towards the android in a sluggish manner. A dark box was attached to her belt. Connor immediately scanned the object to determine if it matched any taser in the database.

Stress level: 93%

A truck passed by. Connor quickly scanned the plate number.

Stress level: 95%

Connor ran fast and his breaths went faster. Sensors detect risk all over the place, overloading its systems. A safer place was necessary for cooldown. The android didn't stop until he returned to the place he started. But unlike the mornings, the marketplace was devoid of life and activity.

The fish store was again closed, the aquariums hidden behind thick curtains.

At 97% stress level, Connor would be recalled back to the Shinra Headquarters for further diagnostic. There was still time before the next report.

[our-beginnings]

Lena Groeger: Developer, designer, and journalist at ProPublica

First thing’s first: tell us a bit about who you are, and what you do now.

Sure! I’m Lena, I’m a journalist/designer/developer at ProPublica. My job is a mix of reporting, writing, designing and coding, and I mostly make interactive graphics & data visualizations. I’ve also got a column called Visual Evidence where I write about how data & design affects people’s everyday lives. I was living in Brooklyn until a few months ago when I moved to San Francisco... and now live & work a block away from the beach!

What’s your favourite thing about ProPublica?

As an organization, I love our mission: to do journalism in the public interest, to give people context for what’s happening in their world right now (especially these days), and to have a real impact. But my favorite thing is definitely the people. I work with incredibly talented and accomplished journalists who at the same time manage to be some of the most humble people I’ve ever met. I consider myself ridiculously lucky to get to learn from them every day and to have a chance to try out crazy new ideas together.  

Talk about some recent projects. How do you come up with those crazy ideas, and how do they become reality?

Usually it’s a random mix of things. Sometimes it’s another reporter going “Hey look, this health agency publishes emergency room waiting times on their website, what if we did something with that?” which led to an app called ER Wait Watcher. Other times it’s an editor saying, “We have this complex cast of characters for a story about narco-terrorism, what if we made it into a comic?” which also turned into an interactive piece. And sometimes it’s just me surfing the internet and stumbling upon a French researcher’s website that happens to have county-level presidential election results going back to 1828.

Above: “The Making of a Narco-Terrorist,” a ProPublica interactive examination of whether the DEA is stopping threats or staging them. 

The latter was probably my favorite recent project, a piece called Lost Cause that we published right before the election. It framed past American elections through the lens of the losers: showing maps of who voted for the candidate that ultimately lost. The best part was interviewing a bunch of historians and geographers about what was going on in the country at the time and what they could “see” in the maps. Those conversations were endlessly fascinating (pro-tip: interview academics as much as possible – they are extremely eager and excited to talk to you about their work!)

Above: The “Lost Cause” project, showing past American elections from the standpoint of the loser. 

On the technical side, creating almost 50 maps for the piece was an interesting challenge, because not only did we need to map dozens of election results, but we needed to create historically accurate maps that corresponded to each election year. Turns out shape of the country has changed a lot since the 19th century (who knew!) and each year the county boundaries were slightly, or in some cases drastically, different.  

Thinking back, what was your ‘eureka' or origin moment?

I went to graduate school for science journalism, thinking I would write long articles about discoveries in neuroscience and psychology (I was really into that stuff in college, but didn’t want to be the one in the actual lab doing the actual work). I had never heard of data journalism or data visualization, and I certainly didn’t know that people working in news made graphics for the web. But when I found out (right around Hans Rosling’s famous wealth & health of nations video) it was instantly appealing. I had always really loved graphic design (mostly in a print context, posters and such), and suddenly here was this thing in journalism that let you tell incredible visual stories and meant that I could sometimes use Photoshop? I was so in.

One of the requirements of NYU’s science journalism program was to do an internship over the summer. I did mine at WIRED, and the vast majority of it I spent writing articles for the the Danger Room blog about drones and spies and other sci-fi worthy military projects. Somehow my editor Noah Shachtman agreed to let me do a data visualization project for the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 (keep in mind I had not published a single other graphic and all Noah knew was that I was capable of Photoshopping words onto petri dishes and chickens onto tanks).   

suddenly here was this thing in journalism that let you tell incredible visual stories and meant that I could sometimes use Photoshop? I was so in.

But we did it, and the final graphic was an attempt to tally up the cost of the war on terror. I realized at that point that this was precisely what I wanted to spend all my time doing.  

Above: ‘The Dead, The Dollars, The Drones’, Lena’s ‘eureka’ moment. 

What path did your career take from there? How do you find yourself where you are today?

It wasn’t long after that I started an internship at ProPublica. It was a writing internship – I was mostly writing stories about health and the environment. But every so often I would pitch a visual idea to Scott Klein, the editor of the data/graphics team (or “news apps” team, as we call it), and ask if I could design and build it myself. The first one I ever did was a side-by-side comparison of two types of airport body scanners. Then a fellowship on Scott’s team opened up and I moved across the office, and a few months later was hired full-time as a news apps developer.

Turns out that to make news graphics today, you need to know how to code. Whether that’s Javascript, R, Ruby or some other language often depends on the project, but knowing at least one programming language and being open to learning more is pretty important. When I stumbled into data visualization I knew only maybe a tiny bit of HTML and CSS. So my first year at ProPublica was a crash course in all kinds of programming challenges that I now encounter all the time but then were totally new: how to scrape a website, how to put dots on an map, how to make an interactive chart.

each project is less “Holy shit I have no idea how to do that,” and more “I’ve solved this other problem, I can probably do that one too.”

That year was probably the most insane and frustrating and rewarding year of work in my life. I was very lucky that ProPublica in general and Scott in particular care a great deal about giving reporters the time and space they need to learn new things. And it has its benefits – I joke with Jeff Larson and Al Shaw (two developers on our team) that they’ll never have trouble reading my code because they literally taught me all of it.

These days, I’m still learning a ton of new stuff for every project, but I’m familiar enough with the basics that each project is less “Holy shit I have no idea how to do that,” and more “I’ve solved this other problem, I can probably do that one too.” So, for example, when we wanted to make a visualization of human body parts for a project about America’s disastrous workers comp system, I was able to cobble together some pieces of code plus some shapes I made in Illustrator into an interactive that worked. For more on that project (I’m sure some of you may have a question or two) here’s a longer explanation.

In general, I’ve also gotten significantly better at Googling for the answer – that’s not nothing. 😜

Do you think that this convergence of data, design, and journalism is the way forward for the news industry more broadly?

I don’t want to make any sweeping predictions about the news industry, but I do think having data, programming and design skills can make you a better journalist, for a bunch of reasons. Here are a few: first, knowing a bit of programming lets you find and tell stories that no one else can.  If I had to copy and paste all the data that went into this project about health and safety problems on cruise ships, it would have taken me years (not even kidding). But knowing how to scrape a few websites let me grab all that data and sort, filter and analyze it into its final form.

knowing a bit of programming lets you find and tell stories that no one else can.

Second, having some data wrangling skills let’s you verify information on your own – you aren’t dependent on PR people or government officials to tell you what’s true. You can see for yourself what the data says! (That said, it’s probably a good idea to talk to a bunch of experts and do enough reporting to back up what you find).

Finally, knowing a little bit about design helps you create projects that are easy to understand and use. Most people know how to read a story that’s made entirely of words. But some of the interactive graphics and data visualizations making their way into the news these days are pretty complex, and being able to design them in a way that’s easy to follow and also tells a compelling story is important. That doesn’t happen by accident – designers spend a lot of time thinking about the user, ideally testing out different approaches on real people. Constantly keeping the user in mind usually makes for better journalism.   

You teach design and data visualisation as well; what prompted you to do this, and how have you found the experience of teaching?

Teaching is both much more difficult and much more fulfilling than I ever thought. It’s really amazing to see students applying the things you’ve mentioned in class to their own work, or getting them super excited about a new technique or a chart form they’d never seen. Then again, it’s really humbling to realize that even though you thought your lecture about, say, design principles was awesome and intuitive and the best explanation yet, some students are still totally mystified. It’s always a learning process for me also, since I’m constantly reworking lectures or tutorials to make them easier to follow or adjusting exercises to better capture the ideas I’m trying to explain.

One thing I do try to do is make all of my teaching materials, slides, etc, totally public and free for anyone to use. I’m constantly learning from free online resources, and feel like it’s important to put materials back into that space for others. We do this at ProPublica too, my colleague Sisi Wei and I run a 2-week workshop called the Data Institute, and put our entire curriculum up online for anyone to look at. It’s not the same as being in a classroom for 2 weeks, but it’s a way we try to give more people access to what we teach (at no cost to them).

A final note on teaching: showing students the Web Inspector for the first time is always a joy. That collective gasp probably makes the entire class worth it.

Finally: if you could do everything all over again, do you think your journey would be the same? Would you want it to be?

I’m sure if I did everything over again my journey would look very different. It’s easier to tell a nice linear narrative in retrospect, but along the way my path felt very random. Even going into journalism in the first place feels a lot like an accident (I applied to NYU after a good friend told me about the program, and just happened to get a full scholarship to go). But I do think I would have eventually come across data visualization, especially now that it’s become so much more mainstream. And it was probably inevitable that I was pulled towards some combination of design and writing.

And what about the future?

We’ll have to see! Luckily the intersection of journalism, technology and design is so broad that I don’t think I’ll be bored anytime soon.

Anything you’re particularly excited about?

I really like gifs that explain things.

Endless thanks to Lena for her patience with this interview! Find her on her website, or on Twitter.