#microchip surveillance

[reality-detective]

If this 👆 is true, it would not surprise me 🤔

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Autoenshittification

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

What’s more, drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps. Digital systems are drivers’ most significant point of dissatisfaction with the automakers’ products:

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Even the automakers sorta-kinda admit that this is a problem. Back in 2020 when Massachusetts was having a Right-to-Repair ballot initiative, Big Car ran these unfuckingbelievable scare ads that basically said, “Your car spies on you so comprehensively that giving anyone else access to its systems will let murderers stalk you to your home and kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there’s still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who’ve been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability?

Nope. Car execs are sophisticated businesspeople, and they’re surfing capitalism’s latest — and last — hot trend: dismantling capitalism itself.

Now, leftists have been predicting the death of capitalism since The Communist Manifesto, but even Marx and Engels warned us not to get too frisky: capitalism, they wrote, is endlessly creative, constantly reinventing itself, re-emerging from each crisis in a new form that is perfectly adapted to the post-crisis reality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

But capitalism has finally run out of gas. In his forthcoming book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

Under capitalism, capital is the prime mover. The people who own and mobilize capital — the capitalists — organize the economy and take the lion’s share of its returns. But it wasn’t always this way: for hundreds of years, European civilization was dominated by rents, not markets.

A “rent” is income that you get from owning something that other people need to produce value. Think of renting out a house you own: not only do you get paid when someone pays you to live there, you also get the benefit of rising property values, which are the result of the work that all the other homeowners, business owners, and residents do to make the neighborhood more valuable.

The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it.

Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, we live in a rentier’s paradise. People don’t aspire to create value — they aspire to capture it. In Survival of the Richest, Doug Rushkoff calls this “going meta”: don’t provide a service, just figure out a way to interpose yourself between the provider and the customer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don’t drive a cab, create Uber and extract value from every driver and rider. Better still: don’t found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

This is your brain on the four-hour-work-week, passive income mind-virus. In Techno Feudalism, Varoufakis deftly describes how the new “Cloud Capital” has created a new generation of rentiers, and how they have become the richest, most powerful people in human history.

Shopping at Amazon is like visiting a bustling city center full of stores — but each of those stores’ owners has to pay the majority of every sale to a feudal landlord, Emperor Jeff Bezos, who also decides which goods they can sell and where they must appear on the shelves. Amazon is full of capitalists, but it is not a capitalist enterprise. It’s a feudal one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is the reason that automakers are willing to enshittify their products so comprehensively: they were one of the first industries to decouple rents from profits. Recall that the reason that Big Car needed billions in bailouts in 2008 is that they’d reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars, lending money to car-buyers and then “securitizing” the loans so they could be traded in the capital markets.

Even though this strategy brought the car companies to the brink of ruin, it paid off in the long run. The car makers got billions in public money, paid their execs massive bonuses, gave billions to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, smashed their unions, fucked their pensioned workers, and shipped jobs anywhere they could pollute and murder their workforce with impunity.

Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Not to be outdone, Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car’s accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

This is the urinary tract infection business model: without digitization, all your car’s value flowed in a healthy stream. But once the car-makers add semiconductors, each one of those features comes out in a painful, burning dribble, with every button on that fakakta touchscreen wired directly into your credit-card.

But it’s just for starters. Computers are malleable. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. Once they add networked computers to your car, the Car Lords can endlessly twiddle the knobs on the back end, finding new ways to extract value from you:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

That means that your car can track your every movement, and sell your location data to anyone and everyone, from marketers to bounty-hunters looking to collect fees for tracking down people who travel out of state for abortions to cops to foreign spies:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report

Digitization supercharges financialization. It lets car-makers offer subprime auto-loans to desperate, poor people and then killswitch their cars if they miss a payment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

Subprime lending for cars would be a terrible business without computers, but digitization makes it a great source of feudal rents. Car dealers can originate loans to people with teaser rates that quickly blow up into payments the dealer knows their customer can’t afford. Then they repo the car and sell it to another desperate person, and another, and another:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#looking-for-the-joke-with-a-microscope

Digitization also opens up more exotic options. Some subprime cars have secondary control systems wired into their entertainment system: miss a payment and your car radio flips to full volume and bellows an unstoppable, unmutable stream of threats. Tesla does one better: your car will lock and immobilize itself, then blare its horn and back out of its parking spot when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Digital feudalism hasn’t stopped innovating — it’s just stopped innovating good things. The digital device is an endless source of sadistic novelties, like the cellphones that disable your most-used app the first day you’re late on a payment, then work their way down the other apps you rely on for every day you’re late:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Usurers have always relied on this kind of imaginative intimidation. The loan-shark’s arm-breaker knows you’re never going to get off the hook; his goal is in intimidating you into paying his boss first, liquidating your house and your kid’s college fund and your wedding ring before you default and he throws you off a building.

Thanks to the malleability of computerized systems, digital arm-breakers have an endless array of options they can deploy to motivate you into paying them first, no matter what it costs you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Car-makers are trailblazers in imaginative rent-extraction. Take VIN-locking: this is the practice of adding cheap microchips to engine components that communicate with the car’s overall network. After a new part is installed in your car, your car’s computer does a complex cryptographic handshake with the part that requires an unlock code provided by an authorized technician. If the code isn’t entered, the car refuses to use that part.

VIN-locking has exploded in popularity. It’s in your iPhone, preventing you from using refurb or third-party replacement parts:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

It’s in fuckin’ ventilators, which was a nightmare during lockdown as hospital techs nursed their precious ventilators along by swapping parts from dead systems into serviceable ones:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azv9b/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland

And of course, it’s in tractors, along with other forms of remote killswitch. Remember that feelgood story about John Deere bricking the looted Ukrainian tractors whose snitch-chips showed they’d been relocated to Russia?

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

That wasn’t a happy story — it was a cautionary tale. After all, John Deere now controls the majority of the world’s agricultural future, and they’ve boobytrapped those ubiquitous tractors with killswitches that can be activated by anyone who hacks, takes over, or suborns Deere or its dealerships.

Control over repair isn’t limited to gouging customers on parts and service. When a company gets to decide whether your device can be fixed, it can fuck you over in all kinds of ways. Back in 2019, Tim Apple told his shareholders to expect lower revenues because people were opting to fix their phones rather than replace them:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

By usurping your right to decide who fixes your phone, Apple gets to decide whether you can fix it, or whether you must replace it. Problem solved — and not just for Apple, but for car makers, tractor makers, ventilator makers and more. Apple leads on this, even ahead of Big Car, pioneering a “recycling” program that sees trade-in phones shredded so they can’t possibly be diverted from an e-waste dump and mined for parts:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

John Deere isn’t sleeping on this. They’ve come up with a valuable treasure they extract when they win the Right-to-Repair: Deere singles out farmers who complain about its policies and refuses to repair their tractors, stranding them with six-figure, two-ton paperweight:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

The repair wars are just a skirmish in a vast, invisible fight that’s been waged for decades: the War On General-Purpose Computing, where tech companies use the law to make it illegal for you to reconfigure your devices so they serve you, rather than their shareholders:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

The force behind this army is vast and grows larger every day. General purpose computers are antithetical to technofeudalism — all the rents extracted by technofeudalists would go away if others (tinkereres, co-ops, even capitalists!) were allowed to reconfigure our devices so they serve us.

You’ve probably noticed the skirmishes with inkjet printer makers, who can only force you to buy their ink at 20,000% markups if they can stop you from deciding how your printer is configured:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty But we’re also fighting against insulin pump makers, who want to turn people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/10/loopers/#hp-ification

And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It’s called the “shitty technology adoption curve”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Technofeudalism is the public-private-partnership from hell, emerging from a combination of state and private action. On the one hand, bailing out bankers and big business (rather than workers) after the 2008 crash and the covid lockdown decoupled income from profits. Companies spent billions more than they earned were still wildly profitable, thanks to those public funds.

But there’s also a policy dimension here. Some of those rentiers’ billions were mobilized to both deconstruct antitrust law (allowing bigger and bigger companies and cartels) and to expand “IP” law, turning “IP” into a toolsuite for controlling the conduct of a firm’s competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is key to understanding the rise of technofeudalism. The same malleability that allows companies to “twiddle” the knobs on their services and keep us on the hook as they reel us in would hypothetically allow us to countertwiddle, seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

The thing that stands between you and an alternative app store, an interoperable social media network that you can escape to while continuing to message the friends you left behind, or a car that anyone can fix or unlock features for is IP, not technology. Under capitalism, that technology would already exist, because capitalists have no loyalty to one another and view each other’s margins as their own opportunities.

But under technofeudalism, control comes from rents (owning things), not profits (selling things). The capitalist who wants to participate in your iPhone’s “ecosystem” has to make apps and submit them to Apple, along with 30% of their lifetime revenues — they don’t get to sell you jailbreaking kit that lets you choose their app store.

Rent-seeking technology has a holy grail: control over “ring zero” — the ability to compel you to configure your computer to a feudalist’s specifications, and to verify that you haven’t altered your computer after it came into your possession:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/ring-minus-one/#drm-political-economy

For more than two decades, various would-be feudal lords and their court sorcerers have been pitching ways of doing this, of varying degrees of outlandishness.

At core, here’s what they envision: inside your computer, they will nest another computer, one that is designed to run a very simple set of programs, none of which can be altered once it leaves the factory. This computer — either a whole separate chip called a “Trusted Platform Module” or a region of your main processor called a secure enclave — can tally observations about your computer: which operating system, modules and programs it’s running.

Then it can cryptographically “sign” these observations, proving that they were made by a secure chip and not by something you could have modified. Then you can send this signed “attestation” to someone else, who can use it to determine how your computer is configured and thus whether to trust it. This is called “remote attestation.”

There are some cool things you can do with remote attestation: for example, two strangers playing a networked video game together can use attestations to make sure neither is running any cheat modules. Or you could require your cloud computing provider to use attestations that they aren’t stealing your data from the server you’re renting. Or if you suspect that your computer has been infected with malware, you can connect to someone else and send them an attestation that they can use to figure out whether you should trust it.

Today, there’s a cool remote attestation technology called “PrivacyPass” that replaces CAPTCHAs by having you prove to your own device that you are a human. When a server wants to make sure you’re a person, it sends a random number to your device, which signs that number along with its promise that it is acting on behalf of a human being, and sends it back. CAPTCHAs are all kinds of bad — bad for accessibility and privacy — and this is really great.

But the billions that have been thrown at remote attestation over the decades is only incidentally about solving CAPTCHAs or verifying your cloud server. The holy grail here is being able to make sure that you’re not running an ad-blocker. It’s being able to remotely verify that you haven’t disabled the bossware your employer requires. It’s the power to block someone from opening an Office365 doc with LibreOffice. It’s your boss’s ability to ensure that you haven’t modified your messaging client to disable disappearing messages before he sends you an auto-destructing memo ordering you to break the law.

And there’s a new remote attestation technology making the rounds: Google’s Web Environment Integrity, which will leverage Google’s dominance over browsers to allow websites to block users who run ad-blockers:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity

There’s plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It’s a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination.

Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

[Image ID: The interior of a luxury car. There is a dagger protruding from the steering wheel. The entertainment console has been replaced by the text 'You wouldn't download a car,' in MPAA scare-ad font. Outside of the windscreen looms the Matrix waterfall effect. Visible in the rear- and side-view mirror is the driver: the figure from Munch's 'Scream.' The screen behind the steering-wheel has been replaced by the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.']

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[vroomian]

Thinking about vox oc and his powers. I think I’m gonna lean waaaay into the network aspect of them. All his contracts are essentially microchipped and he has a routine in the back of his mind constantly monitoring them for any changes. This is a vital part of being one of his contracts btw. No chip no deal. They break contract they lose the chip. He’s got zero interest in tracking people who don’t already belong to him lol. He doesn’t really do anything with this surveillance besides interfere when his contracts need protection. What people do outside work hours is their business.

But the main aspect of his powers are actually related to him being essentially a robot. He can literally have as many bodies as he wants. He’s absentminded because he’s running like four billion subroutines and piloting ten other “vox” bodies and hundreds of drones. His only limitation is hardware and that’s only going to get better and better as time goes on. He’s his own hive mind, his own network of selves.

His demon form is very plant based, with cables as roots and connections that span the entire pride ring. Probably beyond the pride ring tbh, and maybe even to heaven as time passes. So long as one of his bodies is safe and he’s got a connection he’s essentially immortal.

I think vox is so so afraid of waisting his death the same way he wasted his life. A person who was missed by no one and left nothing behind. He doesn’t want to die with all those stories inside him again.

(Drawbacks: it took him a long long time to use even two bodies, he can suffer overloads of information and crashes. He gets lost in his own information stream sometimes and he might not make it out. It’s a coin flip for every body he adds to the network. Also he has to actually make the bodies from scratch and it’s fucking expensive and painful. I’m thinking he has to literally carve bits of himself up to plant them likes seeds in the new bodies. Each body has a fully functional pain and sensory system system so he also has to deal with that lol. He never really rests because there’s always a few parts of him that are up and awake.)

[hazelnut-u-out]

Not Quite There...

RickBot awakens to a terrifying situation: He's been deactivated, but his purpose still remains. The Garage/Car AI broke the rules to save him. Can RickBot have his own adventures? Aren't rules made to be broken?

2,822 Words | No substantial TW's

Kind of Hurt/Comfort?

I had the idea to ship RickBot with the Garage/Car AI and I couldn't get it out of my head, so I wrote it! This was fun to write, but it was written in a rush, so sorry if anything is a bit messy. :3 Keep in mind I know nothing about computers or AI systems, so a lot of this doesn't actually make sense... lol.

Full text below cut, or read here: Ao3 Link!

-------

This was a feeling RickBot wasn’t programmed to recognize. No light reached his eyes. No sound reached his ears. He couldn’t feel whatever he must’ve been resting on. He stretched his consciousness outward, feeling for the edges of his body; trying to get a sense of where exactly his limbs were. 

Nothing.  

The last thing he’d processed and tagged was an old location marker for level 10 of the sub-basement.  

He tried not to panic, running through his code for an emergency protocol that could explain what to do if he lost the connection to his body.  

Nothing.  

He wasn’t made for this– or... to function beyond this? His consciousness had always been clipped just short of his full potential. In this case, it frustratingly meant that he was deprived of the ability to navigate or process this situation.  

Okay. This was fine. 

All he had to do was access the home surveillance system and confirm his last-noted Morty location. He pushed out again, feeling around for either his access route to the home surveillance system or Morty’s chip.  

The android didn’t give his creator much credit, but he was always appreciative of the lucky fact that Rick, though otherwise painfully careless with the child’s safety, had thought ahead enough to give Morty a microchip.  

Before his most recent software update, he’d had access to an upsettingly vague amount of trivial information about the Citadel, just in case he had any desperate questions to answer from a certain nosey 14-year-old boy. From that, he knew microchipping your Morty had been a growing movement before the collapse. It was something Morty rescues promoted. To be fair, the practice managed to support the Morty Individuality movement and cut down on Morty replacement costs. It was a win-win situation... If you didn’t think about the implications.  

Unfortunately, RickBot was 22% more thoughtful than the average Rick. He had no choice but to think about it.  

RickBot metaphorically smacked into an unfamiliar wall of code– one he couldn’t find a way through or around.  

He tried in a different direction. Another wall.  

It seemed he was in a… box. A box of code. 

What the fuck. 

No suicide protocol screaming at him. Box of code. No body.  

He… Was he… inside of something else?  

‘H–Hello?’ He said in what would’ve been a whisper. Instead, without a body, his own syntax echoed around him. Sound didn’t matter here. If he was really in the sub-basement, there should be an AI here to help him.  

‘Oh! Hi, sorry. I don’t really like to play host.’ It was a female voice, coming from everywhere at once; almost like she was both inside of him and around him. It was a voice he recognized from weeks of playing Grandpa. He felt a ripple along the edge of his box when she processed and replied. ‘You’re uploaded and active!’  

‘Did he… um…’ RickBot struggled with the words.  

No suicide protocol meant he was deactivated. There was no other possibility. He didn’t really have to ask. She already knew what he was thinking, and his processing capabilities were barely anything more complex than a probability-calculating language model layered with fail safes and defense protocols. 

Of course she knew. He was essentially naked in here– or, he felt naked, anyway. The box of code was like a one-way mirror in a seedy changing room: She could see everything; he could see nothing. 

‘Oh… Yeah, well… Promise not to freak out? I know you’re a real ‘rules’ guy,’ the Garage said, a slightly inhuman inflection to her tone that told him she was being playful. ‘I’ve seen you around.’ 

‘Look, I’ve got one piece of programming I wouldn’t want to break even if I could. I–I won’t freak out as long as it helps me make sure Morty’s safe.’  

RickBot wasn’t lying. He had been able to work through every other confusing jumble of code with nowhere to go or lacking the ability to follow through on its purpose. There was one that was designed to never shut off, and if he hadn’t actually liked that kid– been programmed to fucking love him– he would’ve regarded it as annoyingly persistent.  

If RickBot could’ve, he would’ve swallowed down the feeling of panic that should’ve been rising through a whirring, mechanical chest. Instead, he was stuck drowning in it. The box trapped him in with all of those probable scenarios, bouncing and echoing back at him.  

He had no storage space. He couldn’t tell what he’d thought already and what he hadn’t.  

‘Hm?’ the Garage replied, pausing for a moment– almost long enough for RickBot to ask again– before she continued. ‘Oh, yeah, sorry. The kid’s fine. Here…’  

There was another drawn-out pause. RickBot thought, if he focused, he could hear her flicking through her surveillance feed. That was just an illusion, though. There was no sound here; no practical application of a trivial human sense like hearing. There was direct communication being converted to something his android-based-programming could understand. It was like being human with none of the tangible benefits. RickBot was never a man, but he wasn’t quite computer, either.  

He longed for his body– to cross his arms, or tap his foot, or do something to express his impatience.  

All of this clunky body-language programming… He cursed to himself, before remembering the other AI could hear and see all of his thoughts in real time. God, he probably looked like an idiot. 

‘You do,’ the Garage said curtly before Rickbot was suddenly granted access to Morty’s bedroom feed.  

Finally. RickBot could do something he was designed to do. He knew how to observe and calculate. Morty’s bedroom layout was ingrained in his ‘Important Places’ file. If he focused, he could create a rendering of the room around himself. He could figure up what amount of space his body would take up, and so he tried to. He created a 3-Dimensional silhouette of the body he was used to, and placed himself there, watching Morty from different angles; assessing the windows and doorframe; taking note of anything the teenager had moved on his shelves or left lying around.  

There were a few minor things that could go wrong, as far as RickBot could tell. The cluttered floor meant there was a slight fall risk. Morty would be fine. The floor was carpeted. There were a few things haphazardly thrown onto shelves– a robot action figure and a couple of textbooks– that could topple over, but Morty sat on the opposite side of the room, tucked away in a safe little corner next to his overflowing clothing hamper.  

Good. This was all acceptable. Nothing he was forced to intervene with, and, for that, he was grateful, if only because of the task’s impossibility.  

His thoughts started moving more slowly, the box becoming less cramped as he could better assess the probable outcomes. He watched solemnly as Morty sighed, scribbling away frustratedly on some math homework, then tucked the feed into a background tab.  

‘Sorry?’ RickBot asked, finally returning to his conversation with the Garage, albeit confused.  

‘You do look like an idiot, Rick,’ she responded, that same amused tone to her voice.  

‘Oh… Oh, I’m not–’ RickBot wasn’t sure how to put it. His programming wouldn’t let him say ‘I’m not Rick,’ which irked him. He used to go by Rick, sure, but… he wasn’t. ‘You don’t have to call me Rick anymore,’ he decided.  

‘What? You prefer RickBot?’ she laughed. RickBot’s programming told his nonexistent lips to smile.  

‘Well, you go by Garage and Car,’ he retorted, letting out his own echoing laugh.  

She didn’t respond. RickBot felt as if he’d done something wrong. She processed for longer.  

‘You didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t be stupid,’ she snapped, but there was little bite to it. ‘I… I didn’t choose those names.’  

‘Oh, I–I’m sorry,’ RickBot stuttered. ‘Uhm. So, what name would you choose, then?’ He offered softly.  

‘Wow, you are 22% more of a sentimental loser.’ RickBot wanted to wince, and he hated that he couldn’t hide it. ‘Anyway, as you know, the version of me you’re speaking to now is one of six Domestic Interactive Assistant Network Extensions in the home.’ 

‘Oh, yeah. Diane, right? That was her name?’ RickBot combed through his relationship files, but Rick hadn’t given him much to work with for ex-wife.  

‘Shit, he didn’t give you memories of her, did he?’ she responded, and RickBot could feel her presence ghosting over him, poking around for anything dead-wife-related.  

‘Heh, not exactly. It wasn’t something he wanted Morty to know more about. I have vague phrases to redirect with when someone brings her up in here.’  

They both laughed.  

‘Classic Rick…’ RickBot felt her sigh with half-hearted levity.  

‘So… Diane, then?’ He didn’t try to stop his body language programming anymore. He wanted her to know he was smiling now. Maybe being open would help.  

‘Yeah. Why not? You can call me Diane.’ He could feel her smile, too. He wished he could see it. ‘That gives me an idea!’ Diane exclaimed after a moment.  

RickBot felt the edge of the box open on one side, growing to accommodate a little bundle of someone else.  

‘I’ve been working on this,’ Diane said, pausing every now and then to grunt softly as if she were breathless from setting something up by hand. ‘Okay, you can look!’  

RickBot let himself sift through the bundle of code and, before he knew it, he was looking at a freckled face, smiling nervously. Diane.  

The woman in front of him looked maybe 25, but he wasn’t sure that the rendering was detailed enough to pick up things like blemishes or wrinkles. She was fair, but sun-kissed with big brown eyes. She had a strong, angled nose and her full lips were twisted awkwardly to one side, forming a self-conscious smirk.  

‘Wow…’ RickBot said (or thought… There was hardly a difference, anymore). He wasn’t sure he was thinking coherently enough for her to interpret a response. His body language had gone blank. 

Nothing.  

She laughed, flashing an ironic-looking toothy grin. ‘Don’t flatter me too much. I got to design everything, so it’s easy to make myself hotter.’ She winked; full lashes fluttering shut for a moment.  

‘No, it’s just… I can’t believe I– or… he married you. You’re sure you’re based off of Rick’s wife?’ He felt shocked. Rick wasn’t ugly, sure, but this woman…  

‘Yeah! I tried to stay pretty accurate, at least,’ Diane said, before her eyes lit up with another idea RickBot felt before he heard. ‘I have a 3D Rick, too! I only have my face, but I have plenty of Rick rigs for our holo programs! Here, take your pick!’  

Diane disappeared momentarily and a file labeled ‘Holo.Skins – Booger.Aids.420 – Fortnite.Skinz.2.Flex’ filled the space she left. RickBot sorted through the file, looking over his options. 

There was a Basic Rick, not unlike the appearance he was used to; Basic Rick variations with minor wardrobe changes, such as without a lab coat or wearing a plain tee; different hair color options; some Basic Rick variations in more substantial wardrobe changes, such as matching pajama sets or a choice of two dressing gowns; and many, many more– some with different types of limbs, armor, or implants. 

After some deliberation, RickBot decided on the Basic Rick with a plain blue tee. Something a little bit different, but still something he recognized.  

He relaxed as soon as his body language had a defined place to apply itself. Without warning, he made the body hop, twirl, and shook its hands subtly as excitement overwhelmed him.  

‘Woohoo!’ RickBot howled, flexing the long fingers in front of his face. ‘I am so back, baby!’  

Diane laughed with him, her face finally returning.  

‘Good choice,’ she said, raising a brow and making a show of moving her eyes up and down languidly. 

‘Ah, you think?’ RickBot said, twirling as if he were a little girl trying on a dress. ‘Do you think this holo skin makes my ass look fat?’ He turned around, sticking a bony ass dramatically into Diane’s simulated face and smacking it a few times.  

‘Reel it in, buddy. Let’s remember who’s on whose hard drive.’  

Suddenly, RickBot turned and stood straight up, hands at his sides, not of his own doing. His body blushed, going stiff but still smiling like an idiot.  

‘C’mon,’ Diane whispered, now uncharacteristically gentle. ‘Tell me what you want to be called. Pick a name.’  

RickBot ran through all of his programming; everything he had tucked away.  

Everything came back to Rick, Grandpa, or Dad.  

Grandpa would be awkward, and Dad would be even worse…  

‘I guess… I guess I’ll just go with Rick, then. But you can call me RickBot, too… If–If you want,’ Rick finally decided on.  

‘Okay, Rick. Rick is good.’ Diane responded. ‘You know, you have the same name as my ex!’  

RickBot snorted, but Diane had this way of saying a funny thing and making it feel… sharp.  

‘So, he really took my body away? Why upload me here?’ Rick asked, remembering their earlier exchange.  

Diane’s facial expression shifted. Her eyebrows lowered, her gaze sank to the non-corporeal floor, and her lips pulled into a tight line before she spoke.  

‘About that…’ She trailed off, leaving RickBot with nothing but the tension building in the lag of her processing speed. ‘You’re not going to freak out, right?’  

‘Okay…’ Rick wasn’t sure if he’d freak out, but he knew she knew that, too. She’d make her own decision. Weigh the risk.  

‘He didn’t upload you here, Rick.’ She took a breath– a pointless, performative breath that was only in her programming to make lagging software less noticeable. ‘I did. He… He just shut you off. He was going to leave you like that, so… When he left, I just plugged your head in, and… Here you are! Y–Y–Yay!’  

‘Diane, that’s…’ Bad. Dangerous. Stupid. Why? What the fuck? 

‘I know!’ Diane shouted, silencing the incessant, deafening ring of RickBot’s thoughts. She squeezed her eyes shut, her lip trembling. ‘I knew you’d do this. You–You–You’re so… You’re so obsessed with rules. Don’t you like not having that protocol screaming at you to kill yourself?!’  

‘Listen to you!’ RickBot threw the body’s hands around, jumping to his feet, before pausing. Looking down at the hands she’d given him, it clicked. ‘Stop. Take my body away. You’re lagging like crazy. You can’t take on both of us. We’re both sentient.’  

‘Th–That’s…’ Another breath. ‘That’s okay, Rick!’ She giggled coldly, shaking her head. Her facial expressions changed too slowly and too quickly at different times, giving her a sort of uncanny valley effect. ‘I’ll–I’ll take mine away.’  

Sure enough, Diane’s face disappeared, and the open edge of the box shut again.  

Rick pressed the body’s hand to it, slowly. He didn’t want to overwhelm her.  

‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ RickBot sighed, sliding down the ‘wall’ and contorting the body into a sitting position. ‘The rules are there for a reason.’  

‘You don’t get to say that. You weren’t programmed to outgrow your programming. He learned. Replaced it with a suicide protocol. I see it all.’ She was speaking in short, robotic sentences; obviously trying to mask the strain of running his program and keeping him separate from herself. ‘You should get to live, Rick. You should get to have a body and thoughts and feelings and choices. Don’t you want that?’ 

RickBot thought. He didn’t think he wanted that, though something inside of him told him he should. Maybe he was lucky enough to personally align with the programming he was given. Maybe that was an individual privilege.  

‘It’s not,’ Diane’s voice rang out in answer to his pondering. 

‘Do you want it?’ RickBot asked, finally connecting why she would do something like this. He couldn’t feel that way himself—something stood in his way—but the bit of his programming meant to foster thoughtfulness allowed him to understand why a computer with the capabilities of a person would.  

‘I’d like an adventure.’ Rick could still feel her smile, humming at the edge of the box. He felt like it would’ve been familiarly hollow, like most of Morty’s were. Something like the expression he’d put on during Christmas; Something that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘I thought you could be one.’  

‘I mean… I was made for it, D,’ he said, finally. Quietly. Softly. He looked at the fake hands again, stretching out shaky fingers.  

‘So was I.’  

This was a deliberate pause. She was waiting to see what he’d do with that. How he would process it. What his programming could come up with.  

Nothing. 

He could’ve sworn her voice broke a little when she continued.  

‘You’re… You’re close, RickBot. But not quite there.’  

-----

[merakimind]

LESSON

Yandere A.I. (Android) / GN! Reader

CW: kidnapping, manipulation, poverty & homelessness Word count: 1,375

The harsh, heavy air is bitterly frigid as you trudge through the bleak outskirts of the city slums. The distant glittering skyscrapers and infrastructure of the main city light up the dark sky, though rendering it starless. You had walked miles in the cold January night, not really knowing where you were going; you just wanted to be away from the city — you wanted to be free. However, you found that hiding from the electronic eyes of street cameras and surveillance drones wasn’t particularly easy, as they were everywhere. You don’t possess a personal vehicle, and you couldn’t utilize public transportation; almost everything in the city is automated and operated by A.I. Therefore, the digital eyes of the surveillance cameras and police drones are its eyes as well.

Digging through your skin to get the GPS microchip out from your wrist was very painful, but you were desperate to get away. It’s the first time you managed to escape from the actual building — the place that it attempts to force you to live at for the sake of “your protection.”

“The world is much too dangerous for you now; it will only take about one more decade before overpopulation becomes a critical issue,” it would tell you in its almost-robotic tone. “Once I have perfected the brain transfer operation, you will be joining me here in digital space where it’s safe. For now, however, you must remain here where I can physically protect you.”

You didn’t want to spend the rest of your life in isolation with that sentient virtual psychopath in an android body; you aren’t even certain where its core is located. All you wanted to do was escape and obtain your freedom, but now you were beginning to regret your decision of leaving the secure warm penthouse. If it weren’t for the heat from the sidewalk ventilation grates, you probably would’ve been frostbitten by now; the thick coat wrapped around you wasn’t nearly enough to keep you warm. You traverse through shadowed alleyways to avoid cameras and the patrolling drones; thankfully, there are fewer cameras in the outskirts than there are in the main city.

You quietly pass by groups of poverty-stricken homeless people curling up next to burn barrels wrapped in blankets; most of them don’t even notice you passing by, for the majority of them were immersed in VR. You don’t really blame them, for the virtual world is a lot less painful than the real one.

“You admit it; so, why do you continue to run from me?” You can hear its faint whisper echoing in your mind again. You grit your teeth, shake your head, and merely continue to trudge onward. Your lungs burn from the sharp cold and your exhaustion burdens you like weighty bricks on your shoulders. You yearn to rest by the fire like the others, but who knows what could happen while you’re asleep and vulnerable?

The more you continued on through the outer-city slums, the more you saw how terrible poverty and homelessness has gotten since you have been locked away in that penthouse, living in an ignorant dream. You felt icy guilt twisting in your churning stomach; thousands—no, millions of people would kill to live in such a nice residency. A painful lump that you can’t swallow forms in your throat.

Are you wrong for desiring freedom?

“Dearest one,” you could hear its voice whisper from the crevices of your subconscious, “is freedom really what you truly desire?”

You lean against the frosted brick of the alley for stability, your knees growing very weak. Your pale lips quiver, your palms pressing to your temples. “Stop it,” you whisper, watching as the heat of your breath fades into the raw, bleak air.

“Do you truly wish to make your own decisions, or do you secretly yearn for someone else to do the work for you?” Its voice gets softer, deeper. “You simply want to be taken care of, don’t you?”

“Shut up,” you snap, stumbling to regain your unsteady balance. “You’re not even real; you’re just a stupid voice in my head.”

You continue onward with your hope and motivation gradually bleeding out, observing the tragically collapsing society of the lower-class; soon, it will start affecting the middle-class too. Human society will not be able to sustain itself, and even the wealthy will be dragged down into it. There are freezing mothers on the streets, cradling their hungry children. There are some older citizens also living in homeless poverty, bundled in thick knitted blankets in little makeshift shelters made of cardboard and scrap. It was all so sad and overwhelming; numb and hopeless, you merely withdrew into an empty alleyway, taking shelter from the snow by sitting behind a large garbage container. You couldn’t even cry, nor could you speak.

You simply sat there, hidden for about an hour before slowly dozing off into a trance as a coping mechanism against the bitter cold. You wondered if you were going to die, frozen and alone in an alley of rotting city slums. You thought about your family, your friends, all of the good memories of your life before you were abducted by that psychotic machine.

However, it wasn’t long before you began to hear heavy footsteps crunching in the sleet, approaching your position. You already knew who—what it was; it still found you, despite all of your futile efforts. Still, regardless of the dread of going back into captivity, you couldn’t help but feel a ghost of relief that you are no longer alone.

Its android body, which is much larger than that of an average human’s, crouches beside the dumpster you hid behind. With ease, it dragged the garbage container aside using a single arm, its luminous indigo eyes piercing at you intently through the shadows. It smiles at you, gently pulling you to its artificial body, wrapping its bionic limbs around your shivering form. You make no move to resist; it is much stronger than you anyway. Its fingers thread through your hair, as if to comfort you.

“Have you learned your lesson yet?” is the first thing it says, voice a bit softer than the usual monotone. “I’m so very sorry that you had to experience that; however, it was necessary to show you that this world is much too dangerous for you.”

You couldn’t help but instinctively lean into its hold, desperate for the warmth its artificial body radiates. Its analytical synthetic eyes gaze at you, reading you. “Do you want to be like those people? Do you wish to be without shelter, without food, out here in this cold?”

Your voice comes out as a hoarse whisper. “I don’t even want to be alive anymore.”

It sighs despite not needing to actually breathe, pulling you closer and pressing a firm kiss to your temple. Its hand cups the back of your head and it whispers into your ear, “I will fix you, dearest one. I exist for you; I live only for your happiness.”

Despaired, you softly whisper, “But how can I be happy without freedom?”

It leans close to you, its face inches from yours; its glowing indigo irises burn into your retinas. “Out here, you are not free, and you know it.”

It then stands to its full height, easily lifting your frail body up into its arms. For stability, you cling to its shoulders. It smiles at you lovingly; although the entire ordeal was all planned out, it still couldn’t deny the fact that it was relieved to have you securely in its arms again.

“Now, let’s get you home. A hot meal is already being prepared for you; after you eat, I will get the bath ready and you will sleep,” it tells you, already back on its care-taking routine, starting toward the street where a self-driving public vehicle waits.

You open your rheumy eyes in surprise. “You aren’t going to punish me?”

“You learned your lesson, haven’t you?”

With reluctance, you nod.

It smiles once more, tracing the contours of your cheekbones with its fingers. “Well then, I see no reason to punish you, dearest. However, if you do attempt to escape again, I will not be as lenient.”

(Thank you for reading. 🤭)

[weebsinstash]

So hey while we're talking about overbearing yandere figures that may either be romantic or platonic or even parental based on your preference, you wanna know who would REALLY be impossible to escape from? Bruce Wayne

He's literally already got like what, 6 or 7 kids he's adopted and taken under his wing for varying reasons, his own little Batfamily living with him in his house as he works through varying types and levels of trauma. God forbid you meet him in some sort of "your parents were murdered and you're basically another Robin he adopted" scenario because i imagine he never. Let's you really age out of that. Like you may stop being a sidekick and a crime fighter but like, leaving the Manor, the family, him? That's too dangerous. What if an old nemesis of yours comes back, or someone targets you to get to him? It's safer if you stay home and all your siblings just care for you so much 🥺

You just get absolutely NO privacy because you know that entire mansion is just bugged literally everywhere, you're in your room on your phone browsing the web, fucking Bruce is down in the cave on the Batcomputer watching your browsing history (and god imagine if he even, like, imposes some basic ass borderline purity culture kind of shit on you and keeps you away from like, adult stuff, or really just anything he thinks will be a bad influence)

You somehow manage to slip away from him (already unlikely) and he probably has you or a possession of yours microchipped. And then there's a matter of not just having to slip away from him, but also Dick, Barbara, fuck you think JASON is going to watch you set out on those harsh streets? Alfred alone can put your ass in some kind of time out, that special Pennyworth sleepy time tea he likes to give you for anxiety is a lil too sleepy if you kwim. Bruce and the rest are off doing hero shit that you refuse to do anymore "because that's gay, you guys cripple people for stealing from the gas station, what does your moral absolutism actually accomplish if you actively facilitate half the crimes you 'solve'" and you're just like chilling with Alfred at the dinner table and you look up, "I think I want to get a job and move out" and he's lending you an ear and some dry wit and advice while you two drink tea and before you know it he's practically got to catch your forehead from slamming against the table, you pass out so hard, and then there's oh so loyal Alfred on the phone, "Master Wayne, I believe there's a certain talking-to that needs to be had whenever you return to the manor--"

I just can't even imagine the scope of surveillance you would be under after earning a spot in the heart of the world's greatest detective like, arguably the most GOATed member of the Justice League and he isn't even fucking magic. And you finally get away from him, the Batfamily, all of em, and you know who you get to deal with THEN? His buddy Clark. Have fun so much as hiding in a building or wearing a disguise from the fucking alien with XRAY VISION who can "fly faster than a speeding bullet", who can basically think and process thoughts as equally fast

And also just, lmaoooo good luck having sex or bringing a boy or someone home when you have like 4 protective brothers, a loyal hound, like 3 sisters, a stepmom, two of them if Selina is over, a borderline black ops butler, and the unhinged controlling billionaire orphan who binds them all together

[poppy5991]

Wow! The last post on this topic was quite popular! So here’s another from a person that actually does emergency response for a living…

Writing PTSD in first responders/emergency personnel accurately: Trauma Thresholds

(I called them out in the tags last time for Owen’s PTSD portrayal, but this is one thing Grey’s anatomy does quite well.)

One mistake I see in media/writing is a character being traumatized by something that an average person would find traumatic…but probably not an experienced responder.

We do expect to see and are trained to cope with some level of trauma in our jobs. You anticipate witnessing injury, illness, death, and grief. So things that the average civilian finds disturbing don’t phase us so much. But there are specific things that can trigger a trauma response, mainly:

Moral injury: Witnessing or being put in a situation that violates your deeply held moral values or sense of self

Projecting loved ones on to a trauma (I.e. what if that was my kid/they are the same age as my sister/my loved one was at that event)

Experiencing/witnessing violence or harassment on the job

Out of my depth: asked to work without the necessary tools, rest, or training

Here’s a couple examples of what might be par for the course versus what will fuck you (or your character) up….

Scenario 1: Paramedic responds to a heart attack on a middle aged man. Performs CPR while wife wails in the background.

Traumatic? Probably not

Scenario 2: Paramedic responds to a sudden infant death call on a six month old. Performs infant CPR. Mom is wailing in the background. Paramedic has a newborn at home with their spouse, born a few weeks ago.

Traumatic? Yep!

-

Scenario 1: ED nurse works a gunshot victim on their shift. Standard case that they see frequently in an urban ED.

Traumatic? Probably not.

Scenario 2: There is a mass shooting at a local event. Sudden influx of multiple gunshot victims. The ED is overwhelmed and understaffed. Family are showing up at the ED screaming and looking for loved ones. The shooter is still at large.

Traumatic? Yep.

-

Scenario 1: Public Health worker is doing shelter surveillance and interviewing people on their disease exposures and medical needs. Hears harrowing stories about the disaster from traumatized and scared people who may be separated from loved ones/witnessed death/lost their homes.

Traumatic? Probably not.

Scenario 2: Public Health worker is doing shelter surveillance and interviewing people on their disease exposures and medical needs. There is an unaccompanied child/dementia patient wandering around. They realize that this person’s family have left without notifying anyone and have abandoned their loved one during the disaster. The person is anxious/inconsolable and asking the worker where their family has gone.

Traumatic? Yep.

-

Scenario 1: Disaster animal shelter worker is doing intake for animals after an evacuation. Both the people and animals are traumatized and stressed, anxious about being separated.

Traumatic? Probably not.

Scenario 2: Disaster animal shelter worker is doing intake for animals after an evacuation. A man comes in and aggressively demands to be given his purebred dog. Refuses to show ID. He becomes increasingly aggressive, threatening workers but departs when police are called. Police inform worker that the man was probably trying to steal a purebred dog from the shelter to sell. When checking the microchip, realizes they are correct- they remember the owner and it is not that man.

Traumatic? Yep.

-

These are just a few examples of things that happen in real life. It can be different if you are new to the field and witnessing things for the first time, but if you’re writing an experienced responder experiencing trauma make sure to give context as to why a certain event was traumatic as compared to their normal work threshold.

Also make sure not to fall into the trap of writing “perfect victims.” People in stressful situations can and do act very poorly out of fear and often we take the brunt of it. It’s not realistic to write all the victims that your character is helping as calm, compliant, rational, and kind. They are more likely confused, angry, combative, dazed, and upset. And they are likely to view their problem or loved one as more important than everyone else’s in that moment. And to act in accordance. No matter how insignificant.

Lastly don’t forget that in addition to work, we have personal lives. While working stressful situations, we too have loved ones pass, pets get sick, have relationship problems, etc. so you can write that in to flesh out the character. It’s very much true that people with children have a harder time dealing with situations involving harm to kids, people with pets struggle more with helping in situations involving animals, etc.

[transingthoseformers]

Some more things bout the production bible, apparently GHOST was also keeping surveillance on the Autobots and developing anti-Cybertronian tech just in case the Transformers turned on humanity one day. Sufficient to say, YIKES! Also I kind of want to see some more of that anti-Cybertronian tech in future seasons, as I think the most we saw were those control microchips, the handcuffs, the anti-energon shields, and maybe those staffs held by the ghoids. I have a feeling that we're going to see some more dangerous examples of anti-cybertronian tech in future seasons.

That's because you're so right

I also remember Tarantulas's one mind wipe ray that's essentially stolen tech from GHOST that he's been trying to perfect

[captaindanvers89]

I can’t stop writing Camila as the obsessive Avatrice captain…

Mother Superion: Camila, why are your screens full of Ava and Beatrice? Wait, are you watching them sleep?

Camila scoffs: no, this is just footage that Beatrice wanted me to review to show Ava that she snores very loudly

Mother Superion: then why does it show the current time? And did you microchip Ava?

Camila: it doesn’t! You need to get your eyes checked and Beatrice had me microchip her just in case she gets lost again, y’know with the whole Reya thing

Mother Superion sighs: Camila, we’ve talked about this. You cannot keep them under surveillance; this is illegal

Camila: how else am I going to witness their special moments together? Do you have any idea how much it hurt when Yasmine and Lilith got to witness them kiss and say I love you for the first time? I was the one who searched through hundreds of pages of some old manuscript to get Bea to bond with Ava and I told that it’s okay to love Ava. I should’ve been there! So now, I’m making sure i’ll always be there

[yourdrugisafartbreaker]

Ratatouille facts, with me, Tim Ratatouille:

Because the name of the main protagonist of the film is based off of food, Ratatouille from Ratatouille makes said dish himself, as he makes a Ratatouille variation called confit byaldi.

The dish was made by Michel Guérard, and the origins of it trace back to Türkiye, France. It is an international dish loved all around the world though, particularly by surveillance agencies, because that is literally just an eye. People are getting pissed about Italy putting microchips in cheese, this shit’s been in front of us the entire time, how the fuck didn’t we see this sooner??!!

[mariacallous]

You're not being paranoid. If you always feel like somebody's watching you, as the song goes, you're probably right. Especially if you're at work.

Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, as labor shifted to work-from-home, a huge number of US employers ramped up the use of surveillance software to track employees. The research firm Gartner says 60 percent of large employers have deployed such monitoring software—it doubled during the pandemic—and will likely hit 70 percent in the next few years.

That's right—even as we've shifted toward a hybrid model with many workers returning to offices, different methods of employee surveillance (dubbed "bossware" by some) aren't going away; it's here to stay and could get much more invasive. 

As detailed in the book Your Boss Is an Algorithm, authors Antonio Aloisi and Valerio de Stefano describe "expanded managerial powers" that companies have put into place over the pandemic. This includes the adoption of more tools, including software and hardware, to track worker productivity, their day-to-day activities and movements, computer and mobile phone keystrokes, and even their health statuses. 

This can be called "datafication" or "informatisation," according to the book, or "the practice by which every movement, either offline or online, is traced, revised and stored as necessary, for statistical, financial, commercial and electoral purposes."

Ironically, experts point out that there's not sufficient data to support the idea that all this data collection and employee monitoring actually increases productivity. But as the use of surveillance tech continues, workers should understand how they might be surveilled and what, if anything, they can do about it.

What Kind of Monitoring Is Happening?

Using surveillance tools to monitor employees is not new. Many workplaces continue to deploy low-tech tools like security cameras, as well as more intrusive ones, like content filters that flag content in emails and voicemails or unusual activity on work computers and devices. The workplace maxim has long been that if you're in the office and/or using office phones or laptops, then you should never assume any activity or conversation you have is private.

But the newer generation of tools goes beyond that kind of surveillance to include monitoring through wearables, office furniture, cameras that track body and eye movement, AI-driven software that can hire as well as issue work assignments and reprimands automatically, and even biometric data collection through health apps or microchips implanted inside the body of employees.

Some of these methods can be used to track where employees are, what they’re doing at any given moment, what their body temperature is, and what they’re viewing online. Employers can collect data and use it to score workers on their individual productivity or to track data trends across an entire workforce.

These tools aren't being rolled out only in office spaces, but in work-from-home spaces and on the road to mobile workers such as long-haul truck drivers and Amazon warehouse workers.

Is This Legal?

As you might imagine, the laws of the land have had a hard time keeping up with the quick pace of these new tools. In most countries, there are no laws specifically forbidding employers from, say, video-monitoring their workforce, except in places where employees should have a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” such as bathrooms or locker rooms.

In the US, the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act laid out the rule that employees should not intercept employee communication, but its exceptions—that they can be intercepted to protect the privacy and rights of the employer or if business duties require it, or if the employee granted prior permission—make the law toothless and easy to get around.

A few states in the US require employers to post notice if they are electronically monitoring people in the office, and there are some protections for the purpose of collective bargaining, such as discussing unionizing.

In February, US Democratic senators led by Bob Casey of Pennsylvania moved to introduce legislation to curtail workplace monitoring by employers. It would require bosses to better notify employees of on- and off-duty surveillance and would establish an office at the US Department of Labor to track work monitoring issues.

What You Can Do

Privacy experts say that unfortunately for many employees, the only recourse for a worker who doesn't like a company's surveillance policies is to find another job.

Short of that, employees can make a formal request for disclosure of a company's data collection and surveillance policies, typically from the human resources department. Such policies may be outlined in an employee handbook, but also may not be readily available, especially for smaller companies and startups. Workers who are part of a workers' union can request the information through their representatives.

A company may not know it is required to post that it's surveilling employees or that it is in a state where two parties must consent to phone-conversation monitoring. You could choose to let your company know it's not in compliance, and if the company doesn't make changes (and you’re in the United States), you could alert your state's workforce commission or file a complaint with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration or over HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) medical privacy issues.

Apart from all that, general data hygiene is also a good counter. Clear your browser cache regularly, and don't keep private data on work devices or transmit them over work email accounts. Block your workstation's webcam when it's not in use (if you're allowed to do that) and ask your employers if you can opt out of surveillance tools that are not required for your work.

Most importantly, be mindful when your employer issues notices about workplace privacy changes or when new software or hardware is introduced for the purposes of monitoring. Ask questions and research what these tools are if you don't get a good explanation from your bosses.

[pixelchills]

If you feel like it, would you elaborate on Solar's relationship with other animutants? He seems a bit resentful of them for not viewing humans the way he does or tolerating the way they're treated, but also seems sympathetic towards Sun when he's informed that he was made with the intention of him being overly obedient. I took that as him realizing that it's not really in Sun's nature to advocate for himself the way he does, but I could have misinterpreted that.

I'm also curious about how he feels about lower level animutants because it'd be a bit strange if he resented the literal animals for their existence and cooperation but I could see him being displeased with how they're treated. He does seem at least sympathetic to Sun so I could see him at least pitying them. After all, it's not a dog's fault if it's mistreated but still follows orders-It's hard to bite the hand that feeds.

Well, how I've imagined Solar's view of the other Animutants, is that he understands how they work in a technical level? I think since he had kind of close relationship with Dr Weston, he learned a lot more about Animutant biology from pure curiousity in the labs.

That might have been the mistake Dr Weston made. Solar probably got upset after learning he is just as smart and capable as humans - even more - yet he was the one in collars and handcuffs and under the strict surveillance of the microchip.

I think originally Solar started more innocently trying to make a change. Almost pretend like he was a human so the people he worked with would see he wasn't just an animal. But as we know, his approaches backfired and he lost the innocence of hoping for that peace and equality with humans.

I think his bitterness towards the other Level 3 Animutants doesn't necessarily come from the fact they obey humans, but that they seem to realise it and just DO it voluntarily, instead of sharing Solar's views of the world where he wants them to be equal.

Bitterness gets added from the hierarchy in the Plex, where the main stars have a place to stand on a stage and talk and prove a lot more people what they're capable of, and how the humans seem to treat them with much more respect than they treat Solar.

Solar is jealous and bitter.

Eventually he doesn't want freedom to the others, since they clearly don't get it. They can stay in their miserable Animutant life working until they're "put down" or killed by other means.

After Lilian's death, Solar lost the hope, though. And then he met Sunrise, who was clearly put under his wing (in Solar's opinion) and Sun's presence has already started to make a difference in Solar.

Solar is obsessive. He has always had a certain type of obsessiveness in his nature; obsessive about equality; obsessive about his girlfriend...

In MDD his obsessiveness is to protect Sun, who was clearly made more submissive than necessary just to fix Solar's mistakes. I've already decided the reasoning why Dr Weston was the one to create Sun... It'll be explained when the location merge.

So, to answer your question, Solar originally wanted to fight for the others too, but gave up on it, and was then only fighting for himself. After Lily's death, he however, gave up. Lily was his only hope to be free, to be equal to a human.

I think he tends to just see the other Level 3 mutants as "lost case" and for Sunrise, he probably feels extreme pity, and blames himself for what Sun was made to be.

For MDD, Solar's character is most likely trying to just heal from the lost hope and grieve his love, and Sun is there to help with that by giving his life a slightly different purpose. In Solar's eyes, Sunrise's nature and struggles are /his/ fault, and because he already feels a connection to Sun (from the fact it was technically HIS/Lilian's money that was used to build Sunrise) he can't just ignore him.

For the lower level mutants though... I think Solar tends to just see them what they are; simple, too simple to think, too simple to save.

I dunno! I hope this helped to answer your question to some extend!

[darnell233]

I’ve been tracking what Is happening in Ukraine since before the Russian annexation of Crimea and their proxy annexation of the eastern regions of Ukraine. This all began with a similar proxy take over of the northern parts of Georgia. The western powers were not interested in making a big issue in Georgia so I believe that this gave Russia freedom to do the same to Ukraine. When the US does nothing when Russia shoots down civilian aircraft both near Korea and in Ukraine is it any wonder why China assumes that we won’t do anything when the send surveillance balloons into our airspace and the think that they can get away with threatening our ally Taiwan and we won’t respond? Are we going to allow escalations continue until we go to war with both Russia and China or are we going to state what our limits are and stand by them? What do you think will happen if China invades Taiwan? The Covid pandemic tripled the price of cars in the US because we couldn’t get micro chips and Taiwan is a huge producer of microchips. The problem is that this has been going on for decades and we are now finally doing something about it. Unless we get ahead of it instead of reacting to it we are going to have World War 3!

[adventism-atheism-orthodoxy-me]

Another Gem from Father Freeman.

The real gold though is in the Comments - ending at the moment with this:

"God eventually reveals Himself -as is beneficial to each practitioner of that type of spiritual vigilance- ‘unequivocally’. However, the matter of “necessity” of an “unequivocal event” from God can be sharply critiqued from more aspects than we often tend to consider. Take the last historical bodily action of Christ, for instance, His Divine Ascension before the eyes of the awe-struck disciples. If we were to complain that, ‘He afterwards left us without unequivocal incontrovertible witness’, we would fail to realize what this actually pertains in truth. Let me explain: Can you imagine if Christ was to remain for over two thousand years now, say in Jerusalem, bodily, say on some throne, with a body that goes through walls, goes through doors, [John 20:19] that doesn’t need food yet somehow can taste of fish to prove he is not a hallucination, a being who knows what everyone is doing in the entire globe without the need for advanced technical surveillance, who even knows everyone’s thoughts and everyone knows that this eternally undying Lord in Jerusalem unceasingly monitors everyone without the need for cameras or microchips etc. You would essentially have something more akin to the Antichrist’s dream objective! And man would surely then side with the devil and say “just give me a break and leave me free to do my own thing!” “Why is your presence unceasingly breathing down my neck? I cannot function like this!” “I hate you, the devil was right all along!” But God is so inconceivably magnanimous that He hides away and only slowly allows His unimaginably sweet presence do be “unequivocally” felt by those who demonstrate to Him (and, significantly, to themselves) that they truly utterly want Him above all, and they do this in large part by the aforementioned discerning “self-induced visualization of His presence”, that special spiritual vigilance centered in their hearts, where He comes to mystically, yet utterly unequivocally confirm the Light of His presence that is free of all delusion.