#prisoner 09

[windypuddle]

Based entirely on the two Mikoto MVs, I'm convinced Mikoto is the personality that killed all the people and John was the one doing the cleanup afterwards. John says "I learned how to clean a crime scene for you. Please jsut say thank you once please"

See I , when I found out that John could attack Es but Mikoto can't, also thought that Mikoto is the one who did the actual murders. Because if MILGRAM can differentiate between the two, you'd think it can differentiate correctly. Unless they just had to encode Mikoto in there somehow before they knew about John... but I can't think of how something like that would be able to tell the difference. Maybe brainwave patterns? the whole "prisoners can't attack the warden" and the 09 situation is really interesting too. MILGRAM is either supernatural (...they do have a telepathic rabbit) or extremely futuristically high-tech ("any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - arthur c clarke). And if it was that level... you'd hope its accurate.

Sorry. long winded way of saying I agree that Mikoto is the one who actually did the murder.

This was definitely what I thought before Double came out, and i only listened to the 09 t2 voice drama recently. I don't remember much of it besides John being scared that if he's fronting too often, Mikoto will disappear, and he doesn't want that to happen because he did all this to protect him, so he (John) should be the one to disappear. But I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) but when a system forms due to some traumatic event, usually the system forms after the event itself, so it would make sense if Mikoto did that, then John formed and cleaned it up, and Mikoto simply blocked out the memories. But Mikoto on his own repressing the memories seems more complicated than him simply not remembering it because he didn't do it, since amnesia is one of the diagnostic symptoms of DID; at least, it would make more sense as per Occam's razor.

[dramatic pause while i go rewatch MeMe and Double. putting this under the cut because it got super long]

MeMe

"I'd play dead even though I'm alive" (subtitle translation, bear with me) is a really interesting line. It could be referencing this facade that Mikoto is putting up about not knowing anything, or possibly his attitude during the murder detaching himself ("playing dead") even though he's the one actually doing it, leading to repressing the memory/pretending it was just a dream.

"'I' will save 'me'" as a line coming *after* the actual murder is interesting. I do think the general view of MeMe is that the more angry/harsher voice is John, while the milder one is Mikoto, but maybe it's not that simple. Nothing is ever that simple with MILGRAM...

"I won't forgive you if this is happening to me even though I'm right" is also interesting in that he turns the forgiven/unforgiven thing back on Es. But what is he "right" about? That he didn't do anything? The phrasing and use of "if" implies that he isn't certain.

The second murder/verse shows Mikoto in the Hanged Man t-shirt (the hanged man signifies sacrifice or indecision/waiting), which is also what he wears in the chorus where his voice is softer, supposed to be Mikoto and not John... earlier at the line of "I will save me" he takes the shirt off and puts on a plain white shirt and talks about shaking it up/switch up that brain, which only John seems to be aware of being a system, so if the plain shirt/shirtless is John and the tarot shirt is Mikoto... then that would indeed be Mikoto murdering someone.

In the mirror scene after the shower, when it sort of zooms out, the Mikoto closer to the camera is wearing his jacket (you can see it on his arm at 1:44) ... interesting. and then the "Take a good look at me until you find me, the truth will come to reveal itself" in the chorus... right after the mirror thing.... very interesting. veeerrrry interesting.

And then he gets the Devil card. Meaning (according to various sources) obsession, addiction, powerlessness, excess; violence and fatality; your "inner demons"/"shadow self"; and in the Fool's Journey, economic materialism. Hmm. like a job. That connects to how John says the stress of his job is what drove them to murder people as stress relief. Another observation: Most iterations of the Devil card have the Devil perched on some kind of pedestal which has two people chained to it, a man and a woman; Mikoto's version of the deck has neither of those people, but some strange objects instead, and the Devil's body is a mannequin, like the ones on the train in Double.

...

And then we see both of them in the same outfit, so maybe just ignore what I said about the shirts...

The security footage after the line "I'm already the fake one" implies that Mikoto doesn't remember those moments directly, but maybe is aware of them due to evidence/the actual security footage

In the very last chorus he flips the Fool card at the viewer, signifying that he's the one that the Fool's Journey is applying to here... and then does a whole tarot spread that i do NOT know enough to interpret. and then the last card he flips over is Death. Meaning transformation, release, change. Essentially, letting go of the past to embrace the future. Hmm. That makes me think John could entirely replace Mikoto by the end of MILGRAM. But who knows...

Double

Right off the bat we get John talking about all these recurring themes, that Mikoto is overstressed and work and too much of a people pleaser, but he needs to stop taking on so much, and John will help him deal with all the pressure and protect him from the consequences.

All this language about John "saving" Mikoto definitely could be implying that he cleans up the scene afterwards. While he does acknowledge that the murder was for stress relief, I don't think he'd go so far as to say randomly killing people is "saving" Mikoto; but if Mikoto was killing people, and John was cleaning up the evidence, that could definitely be it.

Based on the cues to tell the difference between John and Mikoto, the bridge of Double seems to be Mikoto on the phone with his mom, and John killing indiscriminate people... But tbh every single person in this series in as unreliable narrator. just to keep that in mind.

The ending frames of Double go so hard. I think it is Mikoto saying "I'm so sorry" which could be him apologizing for the trouble he's caused with all this damn murder! or just like.... everything. in general. Idk.

TLDR I'm not certain on the specifics of Mikoto and John's whole situation, but I can absolutely believe that Mikoto is the one who committed the murders, and the structure of Milgram itself supports this. The MVs complicate things but people are complicated. I 🩵 unreliable narrators

[unbelenting]

Girl the brainworms are mating. Girl it's fatal.

So anyway, I don't know how many SFTH fans also know about MILGRAM (not the experiment, but the YouTube series).... I just realised I would kill to see certain SFTH characters in there. To get songs hinting at their crimes? To get to analyze and compare them?

If you haven't seen this (ongoing) series, all you gotta know is that the audience has to judge 10 prisoners who've allegedly all killed someone, be it intentional, accidental, direct or indirect. The way we learn about their crimes is essentially through MVs and interrogations, and it develops over the course of 3 seasons ("trials"), currently being at the start of trial 3. If you're interested PLEASE avoid spoilers at all costs, a lot of crazy stuff happened recently.

Like, imagine Melson Nelson as a prisoner. Or Toby. Or Sam from Beetroots & Murder. Ignore the paranormal/magical aspect of it, I know MILGRAM's setting is real life (at least as far as we can tell, and not regarding the prison itself).

There are More characters I wanna name (especially from the Patreon plays) (yk damn well what play I'm obsessed with where a murderer is one of the leads) but I'll stop here.

Point is, mannnnnn that'd be fun

[linagram]

okay let's do this.

out of the future linagram sequel prisoners, which one would you like to know more about the most? (all prisoners are shown in their actual order) (also their outfits will change in the future, but the overall appearance should stay the same)

[lunasohma]

sketchy Chlomaki & sketchy hands

[enlighten3d]

parrot: "it's not that he wants to sit there, its that he wants to protect the five of us." rek: "...and how does being in prison do that?" parrot: "well... im saying that he wouldnt want us to come back and get him because it puts us in danger." wifies: "heh... yeah, i know a guy who thought like that once."

OKAY. ASSUMING THAT WHAT WIFIES SAID IS ABOUT PARROT (which i am assuming bcs i cannot think of anyone else who this could apply to in this current context), THATS. SUCH A GOOD FUCKING POINT ACTUALLY. OH MY GODS.

no wonder parrot is able to take kens side rn and take their stance. no fucking wonder. anyone remember the time that parrot wanted to protect people (ESP WIFIES) from clown so he ran away into a jungle to hide away for the rest of his life so only he would be in danger. anyone remember that. anyone see the similarities here. anyone. oh my gods. this sure fucking is something.

no fucking WONDER parrot is saying this shit rn. hes been there. this is the mindset he falls back on whenever going gets rly fucking rough. he just didnt understand that THAT was what ken was doing, but now that he gets it and doesnt think that they were just considering betraying him... yeah no shit he understands it and is taking their side in this. no shit

gods thats so fucking cool

[kanogram]

(guess these pair's dynamics based purely on drawings and two lines of dialogue/lh)

"Oh, but I forgot to mention how the decks here have all of their numbers slightly shifted to the left-"

"SHUT UP I DON'T CARE-"

"Hey Ichiro, do you want to hear a joke?-"

"Fuck off."

"...Yugetsusai? Are you okay?"

"..."

"What a lovely day we're having!" (You're so annoying.)

"It really is quite lovely!" (Leave me alone.)

"..."

"..."

[eileennatural]

to be clear: when i am critical of megan's law/the sex offender registry it's not bc i don't take sexual violence seriously or whatever. it's bc its largely useless and excessively punitive. bc before megans law, sex offenders already had very low rates of recidivism compared to other violent offenders (re-arrest for sex offenses). and because the sex offender registry actually disincentivizes offenders from NOT recidivating ("if everyone is gonna know anyway, what's the point of NOT re-offending?" "Life is now so hard for me due to the stigma i carry for life, I might as well re-offend and risk getting sent back to prison") NOT TO MENTION the fact that it stigmatizes and silences victims. how many people do you think haven't come forward bc they don't want a family member or loved one to be on that list for life. there have been real instances of young children being identified (and harassed) as victims of abuse based off their parent's place on the registry. if you actually wanted to rehabilitate people you wouldn't force them to publicly humiliate themselves (and potentially invite actual violence) every time they have to move or apply for a job

[dragon-cookies]

I love how much Jecka calls Nicole out on her bullshit in the Re-Up version of Class of '09 because Nicole absolutely does some fucked up stuff and needs to have her ass called out on it

[carbone14]

Des prisonniers de guerre britanniques libérés regardent des prisonniers de guerre japonais obligés de pousser leur véhicule sur la route de Changi – Libération de Singapour – Guerre du Pacifique – Singapour – 16 septembre 1945

Photographe : sergent S. Shrimpton -9 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit

©Imperial War Museums - SE 4874

[the-w-in-wcorp]

09 and 6, 9 (heheh), 12

PRISONER 09- ANTONIO ROSSI 6- Being voted Innocent...conflicts him. On one hand, He's happy that he is forgivable, on the other hand, he'd have a hard time forgiving himself, due to how many he killed. 9- His outfit is already very complicated, due to his engineering skills, anything less complicated he would slip out of. If he was innocent, the jacked would become looser, maybe even opening down the middle like a sweatshirt. If guilty however... Not only do the other prisoners actions damage it, but he also tries (and fails) to damage it and break out. 12- Is on relatively good terms with everyone, but something seems to hinder relations between him and prisoners 04 and 10. Nothing like hate, just some reservations.

[ariclassof09]

What's Minimum-Security prison like?

I'm doing a short story about lesbian prisoners in Ms. Ames' class, and I need to learn more about this. Like, I know maximum security is basically torture, but what about insurance frauders and stuff? Or, like, con artists?

Do they get locked in solitary? Do they hang around the prison kitchen, cooking and being propositioned by the female guards? Are they a rag-tag group of people? I know race is a big thing there, what do you do if you're Jewish in prison? It's not like the white gangs'll take you, right? Because they're like the AB or whatever? If you're hot in minimum-security prison, are you in danger?

@nicole-from-co09, you've researched this, right? Can I please have some help?

[coachcolby-coolest]

No.- I swear to Christ. YOU. ARE. GOING. TO. PRISON.

-COP

I’m going to bend the bars💪

[a-shade-of-blue]

As we read the news about the Freedom Flotilla, it is important to remember that Israel's blockade on people and goods' movement in and out of Gaza did not start on Oct 2023.

Israel completely prohibits the exit and entry into Gaza by sea and air, and also heavily restricts Palestinians' movement in and out of Gaza through the 3 crossings available since the year 2007. Israel not only restricts the flow of food and other goods, but also limits people's freedom of movement, isolating Gaza from the rest of Palestine and the whole world. The 'Madleen' is but one of several Gaza-bound ships intercepted by Israel since 2007.

Ibrahim (@aburakhiaibrahim) has just received a rare chance to leave this 'open-air prison': his sister Samah, who is in Canada, has applied for family reunification which has been approved! However, with all the restrictions, making the crossing is not easy and it also costs A LOT. Ibrahim and his family are hungry, but they cannot miss this chance to evacuate to safety!

Unfortunately, Ibrahim's situation in Gaza is only getting worse. He was searching for his belongings in the rubble of his home when he came into contact with the toxic substances the missiles contained. These toxic substances have left Ibrahim's hands inflamed and swollen. As if suffering from starvation and frequent massacres isn't enough!

Please support Ibrahim and his family! They cannot do this on their own, please share their fundraiser and donate if you are able to! The survival of 28 people depends on you!

Vetted! This fundraiser is vetted by @/gaza-evacuation-funds, #336 on vetted fundraiser list by el-shab-hussein, nabulsi, and MohAyesh, #802 on Butterfly Effect Project vetted list!

You can enter my necklace raffle (2.0) if you donate to this fundraiser!

Tagging for reach~ Please dm me if you want of the mailing list! Thank you!

@pomodoko @theygender @kagrenacs @godfrey-the-chaos-duck @justsomeantifas @catwire @professionalchaoticdumbass @postanagramgenerator @imlizy @radioactive-corpsegirl @duncebento @littlestpersimmon  @bisexuel @trans-axolotl @britomartis @ontheoutside-lookingin @ouroborosreilig @axoqiii @wrightfamily @fly-sky-high-09@itwashotwestayedinthewater @stars-and-soda   @the-arachnocommunist @pawberri @samuraisharkie  @dormont @z0nic @ival-eon @yekkes @the-nobody-tournament @rikebe @girl4pay @5weekdays @turtletoria @brittklein18 @lakesbian@tolbyccia @shuttershocky @papenathys @shadowofmoths @nosferatu-library-for-palestine

[linagram]

linagram 2 prisoners beta designs 🎉🎉 just thought these would be fun to post djdkskks

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The US Copyright Office frees the McFlurry

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I have spent a quarter century obsessed with the weirdest corner of the weirdest section of the worst internet law on the US statute books: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law that makes it a felony to help someone change how their own computer works so it serves them, rather than a distant corporation.

Under DMCA 1201, giving someone a tool to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work" is a felony punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine – for a first offense. This law can refer to access controls for traditional copyrighted works, like movies. Under DMCA 1201, if you help someone with photosensitive epilepsy add a plug-in to the Netflix player in their browser that blocks strobing pictures that can trigger seizures, you're a felon:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017Jul/0005.html

But software is a copyrighted work, and everything from printer cartridges to car-engine parts have software in them. If the manufacturer puts an "access control" on that software, they can send their customers (and competitors) to prison for passing around tools to help them fix their cars or use third-party ink.

Now, even though the DMCA is a copyright law (that's what the "C" in DMCA stands for, after all); and even though blocking video strobes, using third party ink, and fixing your car are not copyright violations, the DMCA can still send you to prison, for a long-ass time for doing these things, provided the manufacturer designs their product so that using it the way that suits you best involves getting around an "access control."

As you might expect, this is quite a tempting proposition for any manufacturer hoping to enshittify their products, because they know you can't legally disenshittify them. These access controls have metastasized into every kind of device imaginable.

Garage-door openers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Refrigerators:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#filtergate

Dishwashers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/03/cassette-rewinder/#disher-bob

Treadmills:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#jane-get-me-off-this-crazy-thing

Tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

Cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

Printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty

And even printer paper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#dymo-550

DMCA 1201 is the brainchild of Bruce Lehmann, Bill Clinton's Copyright Czar, who was repeatedly warned that cancerous proliferation this was the foreseeable, inevitable outcome of his pet policy. As a sop to his critics, Lehman added a largely ornamental safety valve to his law, ordering the US Copyright Office to invite submissions every three years petitioning for "use exemptions" to the blanket ban on circumventing access-controls.

I call this "ornamental" because if the Copyright Office thinks that, say, it should be legal for you to bypass an access control to use third-party ink in your printer, or a third-party app store in your phone, all they can do under DMCA 1201 is grant you the right to use a circumvention tool. But they can't give you the right to acquire that tool.

I know that sounds confusing, but that's only because it's very, very stupid. How stupid? Well, in 2001, the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the EU into adopting its own version of this law (Article 6 of the EUCD), and in 2003, Norway added the law to its lawbooks. On the eve of that addition, I traveled to Oslo to debate the minister involved:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

The minister praised his law, explaining that it gave blind people the right to bypass access controls on ebooks so that they could feed them to screen readers, Braille printers, and other assistive tools. OK, I said, but how do they get the software that jailbreaks their ebooks so they can make use of this exemption? Am I allowed to give them that tool?

No, the minister said, you're not allowed to do that, that would be a crime.

Is the Norwegian government allowed to give them that tool? No. How about a blind rights advocacy group? No, not them either. A university computer science department? Nope. A commercial vendor? Certainly not.

No, the minister explained, under his law, a blind person would be expected to personally reverse engineer a program like Adobe E-Reader, in hopes of discovering a defect that they could exploit by writing a program to extract the ebook text.

Oh, I said. But if a blind person did manage to do this, could they supply that tool to other blind people?

Well, no, the minister said. Each and every blind person must personally – without any help from anyone else – figure out how to reverse-engineer the ebook program, and then individually author their own alternative reader program that worked with the text of their ebooks.

That is what is meant by a use exemption without a tools exemption. It's useless. A sick joke, even.

The US Copyright Office has been valiantly holding exemptions proceedings every three years since the start of this century, and they've granted many sensible exemptions, including ones to benefit people with disabilities, or to let you jailbreak your phone, or let media professors extract video clips from DVDs, and so on. Tens of thousands of person-hours have been flushed into this pointless exercise, generating a long list of things you are now technically allowed to do, but only if you are a reverse-engineering specialist type of computer programmer who can manage the process from beginning to end in total isolation and secrecy.

But there is one kind of use exception the Copyright Office can grant that is potentially game-changing: an exemption for decoding diagnostic codes.

You see, DMCA 1201 has been a critical weapon for the corporate anti-repair movement. By scrambling error codes in cars, tractors, appliances, insulin pumps, phones and other devices, manufacturers can wage war on independent repair, depriving third-party technicians of the diagnostic information they need to figure out how to fix your stuff and keep it going.

This is bad enough in normal times, but during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, hospitals found themselves unable to maintain their ventilators because of access controls. Nearly all ventilators come from a single med-tech monopolist, Medtronic, which charges hospitals hundreds of dollars to dispatch their own repair technicians to fix its products. But when covid ended nearly all travel, Medtronic could no longer provide on-site calls. Thankfully, an anonymous hacker started building homemade (illegal) circumvention devices to let hospital technicians fix the ventilators themselves, improvising housings for them from old clock radios, guitar pedals and whatever else was to hand, then mailing them anonymously to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#medtronic-again

Once a manufacturer monopolizes repair in this way, they can force you to use their official service depots, charging you as much as they'd like; requiring you to use their official, expensive replacement parts; and dictating when your gadget is "too broken to fix," forcing you to buy a new one. That's bad enough when we're talking about refusing to fix a phone so you buy a new one – but imagine having a spinal injury and relying on a $100,000 exoskeleton to get from place to place and prevent muscle wasting, clots, and other immobility-related conditions, only to have the manufacturer decide that the gadget is too old to fix and refusing to give you the technical assistance to replace a watch battery so that you can get around again:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24255074/former-jockey-michael-straight-exoskeleton-repair-battery

When the US Copyright Office grants a use exemption for extracting diagnostic codes from a busted device, they empower repair advocates to put that gadget up on a workbench and torture it into giving up those codes. The codes can then be integrated into an unofficial diagnostic tool, one that can make sense of the scrambled, obfuscated error codes that a device sends when it breaks – without having to unscramble them. In other words, only the company that makes the diagnostic tool has to bypass an access control, but the people who use that tool later do not violate DMCA 1201.

This is all relevant this month because the US Copyright Office just released the latest batch of 1201 exemptions, and among them is the right to circumvent access controls "allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment":

https://publicknowledge.org/public-knowledge-ifixit-free-the-mcflurry-win-copyright-office-dmca-exemption-for-ice-cream-machines/

While this covers all kinds of food prep gear, the exemption request – filed by Public Knowledge and Ifixit – was inspired by the bizarre war over the tragically fragile McFlurry machine. These machines – which extrude soft-serve frozen desserts – are notoriously failure-prone, with 5-16% of them broken at any given time. Taylor, the giant kitchen tech company that makes the machines, charges franchisees a fortune to repair them, producing a steady stream of profits for the company.

This sleazy business prompted some ice-cream hackers to found a startup called Kytch, a high-powered automation and diagnostic tool that was hugely popular with McDonald's franchisees (the gadget was partially designed by the legendary hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang!).

In response, Taylor played dirty, making a less-capable clone of the Kytch, trying to buy Kytch out, and teaming up with McDonald's corporate to bombard franchisees with legal scare-stories about the dangers of using a Kytch to keep their soft-serve flowing, thanks to DMCA 1201:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Kytch isn't the only beneficiary of the new exemption: all kinds of industrial kitchen equipment is covered. In upholding the Right to Repair, the Copyright Office overruled objections of some of its closest historical allies, the Entertainment Software Association, Motion Picture Association, and Recording Industry Association of America, who all sided with Taylor and McDonald's and opposed the exemption:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/us-copyright-office-frees-the-mcflurry-allowing-repair-of-ice-cream-machines/

This is literally the only useful kind of DMCA 1201 exemption the Copyright Office can grant, and the fact that they granted it (along with a similar exemption for medical devices) is a welcome bright spot. But make no mistake, the fact that we finally found a narrow way in which DMCA 1201 can be made slightly less stupid does not redeem this outrageous law. It should still be repealed and condemned to the scrapheap of history.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

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

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

[enlighten3d]

its so funny to me how they ended up working together anyway

ALSO ZAM. "sorry im not used to seeing you as an ally!" RIGHT AFTER SHOOTING WEMMBU SEVERAL TIMES IN THE FIGHT IS. SO FUNNY FOR NO REASON SDHJKSDFGKJH

gods i rly get clownpierce here. yeagh throw them in a terrarium and observe them. thats so real.