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reach4themoon · 4 years

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My Love

a/n: I’ve been working on this for a while and finally finished it! I really like Chain and wanted to write something for Taeil (vigilante au’s are also really cool so it worked out well) I tried making it flow and coherent since I am not as familiar with writing longer fics but if you notice anything feel free to let me know!

Thank you so much @daybreakx for helping me with title image and @jaemallow for supporting me ( i finally finished it hhh)

Warnings: Suicide mission, hints of abuse and threats, Vigilante AU, Angst, Death, just overall an emotional rollercoaster so please keep this in mind before reading!!

Pairing: VIgilante!Moon Taeil x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 4861

Dear My Love, I recall when we first met. Do you rememeber?

You were sitting at the bar, sipping on the bitter alcohol in front of you and waiting for your target.

You were a government agent, a puppet. Your father was a powerful man who worked for the government but in his downfall, stole money and went into hiding, leaving you behind to protect mother. Luckily they agreed to let you work off the money stolen through a new program, orphans and those indebted could join to make a life for themselves. However, they never mentioned what happens to those who try to leave.

You worked for them for years, climbing in ranks and building status as one of their top agents. The lower levels start out as street spies, gaining information for the government to use while the higher levels are assassins, gathering information and taking out anyone deemed a threat to the government.

Your newest assignmnet was the Novelty City Thieves, a street group that grew in popularity every day although no one seemed to know exactly what the group did. There were rumors of them being a group of underground assassins planning to overthrow the government while others claimed they were a simple street gang.

You were asked to learn the truth behind the group and eliminate any possible threats. After learning one of the members to frequent a bar, you found yourself enjoying drinks and waiting.

It took several nights of visiting despite the heads of NightsEye pressuring you to move quickly. On the 6th night you spotted him. He wore a loose grey shirt with black pants, his dark haired undercut matching the description of your target. All you needed to do now was get close to him.

“He’s a popular regular, good luck getting his attention.” You jumped as the bartender stood in front of you, winking with a knowing smile. When you looked at the target again you noticed he was right, he was popular.

Many of the girls in the bar were watching him, some blatantly showing interest while others nonchalantly stared. He, however, showed no interest in the girls and simply sat down several seats away from you.

‘So flirting is out of the question.’ You turned back to the bartender and leaned forward quietly asking to pay for his regular drink.

You watched as he grabbed a beer and set it down in front of your target, saying something to him before leaving. You figured he would start up a conversation with you but after several minutes with nothing happening you decided to try something different.

As you debated taking your time and waiting until the next time he visits, a guy walked up behind you, leaning on the bar and snapping his fingers in your face to get your attention.

“You seem to be lonely sitting here all by yourself. I bet you’re glad I came along to save the day, aren’t you?” The man raised an eyebrow expecting for you to fall for the raunchy charms.

When you ignored him and continued to drink your beer, he grew irritated. One of his hands fell on your back as he leaned in close to whisper in your ear, “Aw, come on baby. Don’t be like that.”

You felt disgusted to say the least, and hissed when you felt his hand move from your back down to your thigh. Standing up quickly, you grabbed his hand and twisted until you felt a pop and he screamed out in pain. You noticed your target had been watching and inwardly cringed thinking your cover had been blown until you noticed him hiding his laugh.

The man held his wrist, screaming for the bartender to kick you out and to call the police so he could press charges. “I am going to have to ask you to leave, you are disturbing my customers.” You thought he was addressing you, but instead the bartender stared blankly at the man.

Holding his wrist, he growled at the bartender and glared at you before shoving your shoulder as he stalked away.

The bartender simply nodded at you before walking away again.

After that night you continued to visit the bar and learned more about the bartender and his business. His name was Bang Chan and he easily opened up to you, explaining his bar was popular for underground people to hide out at and even mentioning that the man you had been watching was named Taeil.

Taeil would visit once a week and simply watched the people in the bar, finding them to be amusing. Chan didn’t know much about his personal life, explaining that he was friendly but not very open.

That gave you a week to plan on how to get Taeil to talk about NCT, but you never realized how difficult that could be.

It took over two months before Taeil was comfortable enough to talk to you. You had started many conversations with him that he seemed to enjoy but he never started them and never went in depth with his personal life.

You nearly lost the job multiple times until NE couldn’t get anyone else to take it. This allowed you to continue working on it just with the added pressure of your organization.

Dear My Love,

I remember when I fell for you.

Did you notice it back then?

During the third month of talking to Taeil the two of you had grown fond of each other, having finally exchanged phone numbers and meeting outside of the bar allowing you to know him personally.

He contradicted the stereotype of someone who worked underground, finding him to constantly joke, dance, and sing. You even spotted him with the stray animals and helping younger kids in the street, so how is he supposed to be evil?

You were currently sitting on a park bench waiting for the child-like adult, many little kids ran around screaming and laughing as they tackled each other and rolled around in the dirt. It reminded you of your childhood, or lack thereof.

You were ten years old when you joined NE, finding all your time going to training and work rather than school and maintaining a social life. You jumped, feeling a pair of hands grabbing your shoulders from behind.

“I figured if I came late, you’d play with the kids. Instead I find you creeping in the shade staring them down.” Taeil laughed as climbed over the back the bench to sit down next to you.

Watching him out of the corner of your eye, you mumbled “I don’t know how to play with kids and doubt they’d want an adult to join them.”

You sighed and rested your head on the back of the bench, staring at the clear blue sky above. The silence was peaceful, but you knew better than to believe the silence didn’t hold secrets.

When you glanced up Taeil was carrying a child on his shoulder, two others holding his hand with the rest trailing behind him as he walked over to where you were sitting. The mischevious glint in his eye and kids whispering and giggling told you they were up to no good.

When they got close enough for you to talk without shouting, Taeil suddenly let go of the kids hands telling them to charge.

Yelping, you stumbled off the bench and ran away. The kids chased after you, Taeil following closely behind and laughing at the sight. Taking the chance to glance behind you, your heart swelled and a laugh escaped you at the sight of kids running after you and Taeil cheering them on with his eyes shining and his smile never falling.

It was a wonderful sight to behold and even now it was ingrained in your mind as if you were still in that pocket of time. You spent the day with Taeil like that, playing with the children and enjoying the time at the park. When it was late and the kids were gone, you walked to a convenience store and bought a ton of food before sitting down under the stars and enjoyed the night with him.

“We got way too much food” You laughed looking at all the chips and snacks still left over and how Taeil was struggling to finish him ramen.

After taking the last bite, he set the cup down and fell on his back with a groan. “You can take the snacks home with you, that way you’ll have to think of me later.”

You scoffed at the flirtatious joke and layed down on the grass next to him. You poked him in the side and he quickly swatted your finger away, both of you giggling.��

It became quiet for a few minutes and you thought he fell asleep until suddenly he pointed at the sky, “It looks like a monkey.”

Tilting your head, you followed his finger and spotted the vague outline in the stars. “That’s a cat.”

He suddenly got up and turned to look down at you, “There is no way that looks like a cat!”

Smiling, you called him blind as you let him help you stand up. The two of you continued to pause and look at it as you cleaned, bickering about if it resembled a monkey or cat more.

Dear My Love,

I remember the first time you introduced me to your family.

Do you remember how embarrassed I was?

You were invited over to Taeil’s apartment for the first time and you were beyond excited to say the least. NightsEye gave you permission to go out in the middle of training but reminded you to investigate, even telling you to plant bugs so they could listen in on conversations.

You figured it wouldn’t be that bad, you could put it outside the bathroom and be done with it. When you walked in to his apartment you instead found 9 members walking around and hanging out, making it seem more like a small party over a group of roommates.

Noticing your sudden change in attitude, Taeil rubbed your back chuckling before calling everyone’s attention. “This is y/n, the person I have told everyone about. We’re going to be hanging out here so make sure you don’t weird her out more than usual.”

After many introductions, some forced while others were hyperactive, the roommates went back to do whatever they wanted. Taeil guided you to another room without the members, asking you to wait for a moment as he left to get something.

You looked around as you sat down on the small couch, it seemed to be his bedroom with two beds and a small couch in front of a t.v. You were looking at something on the coffee table next to you when something fell and rolled underneath the couch. ‘Great, now I’m breaking his stuff.’

You leaned forward, practically folding yourself in half as you tried looking for what fell when you heard the door open. “Taeil I think I dropped something but I can’t find it...” You sat up after looking for a few more seconds only to find that the man standing in the doorway was not your beloved friend target.

The man held a smaller build with his mauve hair falling gently over his right eye. Your face began to burn as the blood rushed to your cheeks, the roommate quickly recovered from his own shock and laughed as he walked over to you.

“You’ll have to excuse our couch, it likes to eat random objects. I forgot Taeil mentioned having a guest come over today, my name is Yuta.” He held his hand out, grinning as he looked down at you.

When Taeil came back carrying drinks and snacks for you both, Yuta explained the embarrassing moment to him and both of them refused to let the encounter go.

It was late when you made it back to your dorms but the government had no problem questioning you, ignoring the fatigued look in your eyes or the way you wanted nothing more than to stay with Taeil over helping them.

“Did you place the bug?”

“How was the mission?”

“Did you get any more intel?”

The officials surrounded you, asking one question after another, you felt guilt and fear building up. “I didn’t have the opportunity to plant it, he watched me the whole time.” Was your only excuse for them.

The officials left you alone after that, but the next day you were sent to see the head of the organization and was reminded of why you couldn’t leave.

Dear My Love,

I remember when I finally told you the truth behind our relationship.

Do you remember the way you held me that night?

You couldn’t handle the pressure anymore, you had fallen in love with Taeil. Nearly every day you were together or at least texting each other, you had grown fond of the moments spent together and found comfort in his presence.

You didn’t intend to tell him the truth, but one late night kiss later you found yourself crying. ‘How could you put him in danger?’

You explained everything to him from your father leaving you to the government forcing you to work for them to even talking to him for the first time, he was probably mad and hated you.

“It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.” Instead he pulled you into his chest and held you, silently letting your tears dry in his shirt and rubbing your back to soothe the whimpers escaping you.

When you calmed down you finally noticed he had been humming, waiting patiently for you to finish. When you finally pulled away from him, you realized how embarrassing this must be and found an interest in the hem of your shirt.

He smiled, leaning down to look at your face and gently using his thumb to wipe away the stray tears.

“My love, let me tell you my truth.” You lifted your head at this, feeling the jittering of your heart at his nickname before listening intently to his story.

“I am part of the organization NCT, and we’ve been trying to overthrow NightsEye. We started the group because I was a part of it many years ago, they wanted me to work off some money I owed. I kept track of how much I needed to pay off and how much I was working so when I called them out for making me work more than I owed, they got mad.” He paused, looking at you to read your reaction before continuing.

“I don’t know how I did, but I managed to escape and found Taeyong and the others. They let me stay with them and over time the group grew, until finally when I told them about NightsEye, we formed a vigilante organization.”

His last words stuck with you, “I’ll protect you, we can get you out of there.”

After a few weeks, you had managed to put your mother into hiding and moved in with Taeil and his roommates. The thought of leaving was exciting but terrifying all at the same time and although they’d never admit it, you could tell Taeil and the others were nervous.

You had stayed in their dorms the entire time, leaving your phone behind and burning your clothes to leave all traces of them in the past. Haechan, a smaller boy who always hung out with Taeil, had somehow convinced you to let him dye your hair a different color believing a change in your hair would throw off an entire government force.

You now walked around with dark purple hair that was significantly shorter than before, at first you were upset with the change but Taeil constantly praised your looks and even dyed his hair red for you.

After everyone had their fun over your new hair colors, everyone started to relax. You found yourself bonding with the members and they willingly accepted you into the group. You finally felt as if you could have a happy life.

Dear My Love,

I remember when you first told me you loved me.

Would you still say it now?

You had been lounging in the living room, most of the members were out on a spy mission which left you with nothing to do. You were staring blankly at a wall, thinking about what to do when it hit you.

With music blasting, you wore one of Taeil’s hoodies with a pair of loose shorts, and jumped around screaming the lyrics to your favorite songs.

He came home earlier than the others and smiled hearing some of the artists he introduced you to. He intended to dance with you but when he walked into the room, his intentions were long forgotten as he found you jumping around the living room unaware of his presence, the music muffling the sounds of intruders.

He smiled, not wanting to bring himself to ruin the moment. When you suddenly turned around and spotted him standing in the door you freaked out, quickly dropping to the floor as if to hide. However you didn’t realize you were so close to the arm of the couch and slammed your head against it on your way down, eliciting laughter from both of you as he quickly ran over to hold your head.

“Are you okay?” He tried to hold his laughter in but seeing you nearly in tears from laughing at your own actions eased his worry.

When you both calmed down, you took turns choosing songs and enjoyed dancing and singing together.

The members came home and forced you both to turn the music off and hide away in his room. Laying down on his bed, you found yourselves staring at the ceiling and wondering what to do next.

You could faintly hear the sounds of the members outside as they roamed the house and chatted. You were thinking about what to say something when Taeil spoke first. “Do you think we are making an impact? Are we doing enough to help the people who need it?”

It caught you off guard, the sudden change in mood was unusual and NCT never showed having any doubts with what they were doing, especially Taeil. You sat up and leaned over him so you could look him in the eye while you replied.

“You saved me and my mom, you’re helping someone.”

He stared up at you, the emotions in his eyes revealing so much despite how little he spoke of them. You watched as the insecurities morphed into confusion before brightening as a bigger realization hit him.

“I love you.”

He smiled at you, watching your face contort into a happy embarrassment. You let your elbows go slack and fell on top of him, smiling as you nuzzled into his neck. He huffed and you peeked up at him, noticing the way he struggled to pout.

“You never replied, how am I supposed to know how you feel about me.” You rolled your eyes and hid your face in his neck again, quietly whispering an ‘I love you’ back.

Dear My Love,

I remember the first time I cried because of you.

Could you hold me like you did once again?

You had spent several months with NCT, telling them everything you know and helping them with their investigations.

Everyone thought it was fine, the government seemed to have forgotten about you and they were so close to shutting down the organization.

It was late, almost 2 in the morning when there was knocking on the door. The banging refusing to let anyone ignore it’s beckoning, you could hear the shuffling in the hall and the sound of the chains to the door rattling as whoever got up answered it.

Taeil quickly got up from the bed to peak outside the bedroom door but when popping resounded through the dorms Taeil to quickly ran back to you.

“Go into Haechan and Johnny’s room, lock the door and call Chan.” Before you could reply Taeil quickly grabbed a gun from under the mattress, peaked out the door once again before sprinting out. Your anxiety continued to rise as you heard quiet footsteps and the sound of doors opening and closing.

Quickly you grabbed the hoodie Taeil always keeps on the bed for you in case you get cold and used the connected bathroom to reach Haechan’s room. Johnny was holding the smaller boy behind one of their beds, gun in hand as he focused on the door. You queitly shuffled over to them, suddenly wishing you were armed as well.

Remembering you were supposed to call Chan, you cursed at yourself when you remembered your phone was still charging in your bed. You slowly started to crawl to the bathroom when a hand grabbed your waist, Haechan made a face and shook his head. You put your finger to your lips as you gently pulled away, wanting to get your phone as quickly as possible.

You grinned as you successfully made it to your bedside, quickly taking it off the charger and getting up so you could go back to Johnny and Haechan.

At the sound of the door squeaking open you quickly dropped to the floor, suddenly grateful that Taeil enjoyed the higher beds as it helped hide your crouching form. You listened as whoever came in walked around the room, searching.

You looked around, hoping to find something you could use in a fight until you heard the footsteps. Peaking behind the bed you watched Johnny aim at a man wearing all black and a face mask. The man turned, revealing his own gun and was about to shoot Johnny when he was knocked to the ground.

Taeil had come in hearing the noise and was now on the floor wrestling with him, Johnny ran over getting ready to help Taeil when another stranger ran in. It was an all out fight as they struggled to detain your attackers and you sat there helpless.

You looked around, hoping to spot a gun one of them might have dropped when the boom echoed once again. Johnny yelled, mustering all of his strength to finish the one on top of him.

Sprinting to the bathroom you grabbed the gun Johnny had left and turned, freezing as you realized what happened. Taeil was holding his abdomen.

Johnny yelled something to you as the man turned his gun to him, without thinking you aimed and fired.

The thud indicated the guy was dead, but your focus was on Taeil.

A few more gunshots echoed through the dorms before members came running in. Johnny was on the phone with someone and Haechan was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, unable to move as tears streamed down his face.

You held him in your lap, quickly putting your hands over his to add pressure to the opening and doing everything you could to hold back the tears that clouded your vision. You could feel the warmth of his blood staining the sweater, the way his breathing became harder every second, and how his hands shook when he held yours. The members were shouting now, yelling about getting him to the underground hospital, calling Chan for help, and grabbing the first aid kit with towels to stop the bleeding.

Haechan slowly made his way over to you both, dropping onto his knees as he held onto his leg.

No one really understood how much Taeil kept the group together, but when Chan brought the news of his death everyone became distant.

NCT hadn’t been destroyed, but the roommates that once called each other brothers now found it difficult to look at one another.

Haechan took it the worst, disappearing without a word to anybody. No one has been able to contact him and sometime between the planning, the funeral, and finally releasing the information to friends outside of the group, you found them slowly walking away.

Everyone couldn’t handle the thought that the reason they were fighting the governmental organization was the one who died first protecting them.

Taeyong and Yuta fought the longest to keep everyone together, but once Mark finally walked away they knew it was a lost cause.

Dear My Love,

I remember the first time I saw you after that.

Have you been waiting for me?

After Taeil had passed away you found yourself fighting harder than ever to destroy NightsEye. You spent weeks gathering all of the information from the old dorms and garnering new information through the underground.

Bang Chan helped you the most once the others were gone, informing you of the whispers he heard from his bar. He still insisted you let it go, believing that you could live a life outside the governments reach and happy like Taeil would have wanted for you, but you ignored his concerns.

Eventually the concerns for your wellbeing reached them, after a month of hiding out in an abandoned warehouse, they finally came back.

Chan had called Taeyong first, asking for help and explaining your plans for revenge. It didn’t take long to gather other members, only doubting if Haechan would come back.

Johnny had been the one to text him, explaining you weren’t going to get through this alone and needed their support. With no reply everyone expected him to be gone forever, until he turned up at the meeting spot.

As everyone gathered at the bar, you gathered your belongings back home. Someone had informed you of a possible location for the head of the organization and you planned on taking the opportunity.

Alarms blared through the halls, you peeked around the corner before sprinting to a door at the end. Opening it easily and sliding inside, you quietly closed it behind you before searching the room.

A desk stood in the center with shelves of books lining the walls, but your focus went to the open laptop sitting in a chair off to the side.

You grabbed it and hid behind the desk, quickly searching through files for anything useful. If you found incriminating evidence of what the organization is and what happens behind the scenes, you might be able to blackmail the organization to shut down.

You heard the shouting down the hall first, gunshots and running footsteps alerting you as they quickly approach the door. You cursed, knocking the desk over to use as cover and pointed your gun at the door.

What you didn’t expect was the members to burst in, shouting at each other to get in quickly as they closed the door and got in formation pushing the bookshelves over for their own cover.

You looked at them quizzically, not understanding how they managed to find you or why they had looked for you when they left. With no response you watched as Haechan picked up the computer next to you, silently going through it as everyone waited.

Hearts thudded as footsteps were heard outside the door. No one flinched, not wanting to risk a moment of the battle.

Haechan started it, calmly humming to one of Taeil’s favorite songs. Mark hushed him, hoping that you might still be able to hold an element of surprise on your attackers. You continued it, recognizing it as the one he always used to sing when comforting you.

Everyone took a deep breath, and then the door bursts open.

Before you knew it, people were running in, guns were rapidly fired. You felt the sting in your shoulder first, not fully comprehending what was wrong until you realized you couldn’t pull the trigger. Quickly switching to the other hand, you lifted the gun to aim when once again an electric shock went through your arm holding the gun.

Then you felt the pressure on your chest as you fell back. Haechan leaned over you, stuck between shouting at you and the members as he grabbed your gun and began firing at the door.

You smiled as you felt arms snake around you. “Hello love.” Taeil whispered in your ear from behind. His warmth enveloped you, comforting your broken heart as he hummed along to a familiar song.

You smiled as the sun shined down on you both, revealing the park you loved. The sound of children shouting reminded you of your time with him before.

The shouts slowly became louder and you started to understand that it wasn’t just playful screaming. “We can’t lose you as well” continued to echo in your head as you felt Taeil remove his arms.

You turned, getting ready to tell him to wait when you felt the ghost of his lips trail over your own, his unspoken wish for you to leave apparent.

You woke up in a bed, hearing the beeping of a moniter as the wires rested over you with a blanket gently covering them.

Tears filled your eyes and this time, you didn’t hold back. NCT found you bawling in the make shift hospital room. They silently gathered around your bed, smiles of mixed emotions greeted their features as they waited for you.

When you finally calmed down, they explained what happened after you were knocked down. Chan had sent reinforcements, apparently he knew of another group willing to help and with a line on their front and rear, the organization was forced to flea. No one has heard from them since.

Haechan had been the one to help you through the recovery process while you were in a medically induced coma and continued his care until you were able to leave.

When Chan gave you the okay to go home, the members explained how they had found a new and better hideout. Finding their will to continue fighting and hoping you would help them.

Dear My Love,

I am home now, I am happy now.

Are you watching?

#taeil #moon taeil #nct taeil #taeil fanfic #taeil angst #nct fanfic #nct angst #nct 127 #nct 127 fanfic #nct 127 angst #kpop #fanfic #angst

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i-just-like-commenting · 6 years

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Themes in Luke Cage s2: The Quest for Control

What separates the good Netflix MCU seasons from the weaker ones are how well integrated their themes are into the setup of the story. Daredevil‘s first season did it well with its exploration of the thin lines between heroes and villains, the difficulty of choosing what is good. The first season of Luke Cage focused heavily on the idea of not being able to go backwards, only forwards. The first season Jessica Jones and even the deeply-flawed Punisher tried to tackle issues like sexually assault, survivor’s guilt, and PTSD. But none of them ever quite reached up to the level of that first season of Daredevil.

Then along came this season and I’ve got more themes than I can wrap my head around. I’ve only watched it through once, so take this as a preliminary digestion of what I saw and feel free to add your thoughts and nuances to my arguments.

I’m going to start with the theme that is central to Luke’s character arc for this season: the quest for control, and particularly the idea that this quest is futile. This idea that one can achieve omnipotence is the hubris of classic tragedy, and make no mistake that this season is a tragedy.

Luke’s journey is probably going to be the most controversial element of this season. I get this, to a certain degree. Sometimes you want your heroes to be paragons or to triumph over adversity. Sometimes you want them to skirt the dark side. It’s certainly best if you can have a mix of both, but there aren’t many black superheroes out there. It’s easy for me, as a white woman, to appreciate Luke’s struggle with the dark side this season because I have, at this point, plenty of representation of white women both noble and messed up available for me in media. If that is not what you want right now, I respect that. That same issue is why, as a person with a mental illness, I dropped the second season of Legion once I started seeing where it was going (though rest assured, Luke doesn’t do anything nearly as awful as what David does by the end of that show).

Luke throughout the first season was a very reactive character, partly because his story didn’t actually begin that season. It began in the first season of Jessica Jones, where Luke is a very active character, actively hunting down his wife’s killers. And what does he get for it? Well, he finds out that a woman he cared for was involved in Reva’s death and had been lying to him the whole time, and then he gets his mind controlled by a telepathic supervillain who tries to force him to kill Jessica just like she was forced to kill his wife, and he is only stopped by a shotgun blast straight to his head that nearly does him in.

It is thus perhaps understandable that Luke Cage didn’t want to be a hero anymore and was trying to live a quiet life. His arc for the first season was realizing he loved Harlem too much to do that. In the meantime, though, he was a highly reactive character. This is not always a bad thing for superheroes; go too far in the other direction of actively hunting down bad guys and you get Frank Castle. It did mean that the villains drove most of the plot rather than Luke himself. (spoilers follow...)

In the second season, motivated I believe by being so out of his depth with the Hand in The Defenders and seeing Misty lose an arm, Luke tries to take back control of his life. The problem with that no one is ever really in complete control of their lives, and in trying to get total control, Luke winds up becoming more controlled than ever.

We open with Luke attempting to hunt down every stash house selling heroin with his name on it – not because this drug is particularly more lethal than any other, but because it is using his name without his permission. This focus on controlling his image is one that hounds Luke throughout the season. He’s reluctant to sign promotional deals not so much because he doesn’t want to make money, but rather because he doesn’t want to be “bought.” He doesn’t want Nike or whoever to have any control over him. He wants to be his own man.

Yet thanks to not copyrighting an app early on, he is easily found by almost anyone, most of them armed with cameras. While Luke is sometimes able to promote himself – his “Yo, I’m Luke Cage” speech with all its chest-thumping and dabbing being the most prominent – it also means that when Bushmaster wipes him out, the video goes viral, and is sold without his permission to ESPN, leaving the narrative entirely out of Luke’s hands.

Unable to have control of his public life as a hero of Harlem, Luke shifts his focus to control of his personal life. He refuses his father’s efforts to reach out to him, and when Claire pushes for them to reconcile he dismisses her. When Claire questions his excessive force with Cockroach, he accuses her of “castrating” him. Given that Luke doesn’t much demonstrate many other signs of toxic masculinity, I think this hyperbole has less to do with her “unmanning” him and more to do with taming him, making him docile, under someone else’s control. While I firmly believe Luke was never in any risk of hurting Claire, he does get angry enough to break her wall, losing control of himself and losing her. Once again the quest for control backfires on him.

Even the fan-service-y cameo episode with Danny Rand serves toward this theme of need for control, as Luke works on self-control of his anger through Danny’s advice. To a certain degree this works; Luke is in much more control of his emotions towards the end of the series than towards the beginning, but that doesn’t solve his biggest issue, his frustration with trying to control the criminal world that swirls around him.

Much of his vigilante work involves him chafing at the restrictions and controls presented by legal options. He’s not alone in this. Misty Knight has a similar path of trying to determine how comfortable she is with following the law versus going her own way. She was this close to going full Scarfe and planting evidence when the lawful means of going after a domestic abuser weren’t working, and turned in her badge because she felt that she’d crossed a line and could no longer be police. She scorned at Ridenhour’s compromises, and started assuming a vigilante role.

Misty, however, has power thrust upon her unexpectedly when she is made the temporary commander of her precinct, and in being in actual control makes her realize how much she misjudged the people who had been in control of her before. Heavy lies the crown as they say, and instead of becoming more rogue in her new role, she becomes more conformed to the establishment, more willing to strike deals and work in the system. The downside of this is her having to accept that her “wins” might be fewer and far between. The upside is that she probably the only character in this season to come out in a more positive position than she was in the beginning. To gain control, she has to give up some control, albeit on her own terms.

Contrast this to the walking disaster that is Mariah Dillard Stokes this season. Mariah’s miserable childhood has left her unable to develop trust with anyone, and so she takes on all decisions by herself and keeps control of her assets in her hands, despite repeated efforts by Shades to convince her that he wants to help her share her burdens. Probably due to the stress of taking all of this on herself, Mariah spends about half this season drunk and thus very not in control of herself, making more and more bad decisions as the series progresses. Trusting someone else means giving up control, and when she’s done that she’s been hurt, horrifically. So she trusts no one, betrays everyone, and winds up alone and dead.

These two parallel paths offer two possible models for where Luke goes after the end of this season. This season ends with Luke deciding to take absolute control of Harlem, taking Mariah’s place as the power-broker keeping a wall around the neighborhood and making deals with the bad guys to keep them out.

Yet the utter irony is that Luke only winds up taking this position of “dictator” (more on that term later) as an option of last resort. He is forced by Mariah’s machinations to take her position, with Mariah specifically having chosen him as her “heir” over her own daughter. He loves Harlem as much as she does, and Mariah finds he is the only person to be reliable around her - reliably against her, that is. And of course she also chooses him out of spite, to see how long he can remain incorruptible if he follows her path.

It is a trap. Donovan tells him so, bluntly. But Luke walks into it because he believes he’ll finally get his control in the end, and because it is the only option he sees left.

And try as I might, I have a hard time imagining what alternative he really had. He stops a gang war by becoming the boss of crime, he ends bloodshed, and the scale of what was unleashed on Harlem was beyond anything anyone was prepared to handle by other means. So perhaps this is the best choice among bad choices – for now.

Less forgivable is his decision to turn away Claire in the final scene (and if I can criticize the show for a moment, I really wish we could have seen her to know how she reacts to that rejection). That is a decidedly Mariah move, pushing away the one who loves you because to love is to let someone else have some control over you, if only your heart. (There are direct scene-for-scene parallels between some of Luke’s moments with Claire and Mariah’s with Shades for precisely this reason).

This arc for Luke seems to borrow heavily from Bendis’ run on Daredevil where Matt Murdock declared himself the new Kingpin of Hell’s Kitchen, and established a peace by force much as what Luke is planning. It did not end well for Matt; he wound up losing all his friends, his girlfriend, and going to prison. I hope it doesn’t go that far for Luke. At the very least, he seems open to continuing to work with Misty Knight, though that door-closing shot (a direct reference to the end of The Godfather) doesn’t bode well for that relationship continuing. But we also got a glimpse of connection between him and Danny Rand that promises maybe, maybe he can be convinced to be a true dictator.

Because, as anyone who has seen The Dark Knight knows, ancient Roman dictators were an emergency position created to deal with crises, at the end of which they were supposed to give up their power. Can Luke make the hard choice, the truly strong choice, and know when it’s time to relinquish his quest for total control, to be vulnerable, to allow himself to not be omnipotent?

I guess we will have to wait and see. Though I have other reasons to hope, but that will require another post on another theme of this season: families, both good and bad, found and hereditary.

#luke cage #season 2 #review #meta #super long

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alvizbeldamarcos · 5 years

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Why Care About Not Caring: Political Apathy as a Problem

by Tricia Belda

(Source: Total Croatia News)

Filipinos should be working together to combat political apathy. This indifference may remain unnoticed but the truth is, it is quite prevalent in the country. The citizens want nothing to do with politics, with faulty government officials, with crime rates, with voting, etc. Filipinos these days do not want to bother themselves with the problems of the nation. Such lack of interest poses impending problems such as the masses losing their power to authoritarian leaders, or the country being sold off to foreigners. In fact, these problems are gradually being more evident these days--- all the more reason to tackle and try to put an end to apathy.

Apathy is defined by Merriam-Webster (n.d.) as a “lack of interest or concern”. In a more philosophical sense, “political apathy” refers to the indifference of people towards political issues of concern. Political apathy is currently present among the majority of the Filipinos. These traits are manifested in different ways among the masses. It is evident when people refuse to vote out of laziness or hopelessness, when people deem political topics as irrelevant, when people view rallies or protests as an inconvenience, and other traits which show little to no regard for the country. These characteristics are commonly overlooked, as they seem like simply a matter of preferences. However, having citizens not caring about several deaths, remaining silent about several problems, and merely nodding in approval of whatever the authorities decide on--- these are all tragic signs of the prevalent apathy in the country.

In these cases, the people are not always to blame. A lot of factors are to be considered as to why this apathy exists. Bennett (1960-1984) states that there is a huge correlation between political interest and media attention; possibly implying that people may either pay more attention to the news because they are interested in politics, or that they gained their interest through being exposed to the media every day. Ahmed et. al. (2012) also listed the following as reasons why university students in Government College University, Lahore: bribery, corruption, nepotism, corrupt bureaucracy, feudalism, attack on judiciary, and ignoring public demands. On a local perspective, primary causes would be the lack of education among masses, desensitization brought about by the media, being part of the privileged/unaffected, and/or the sense of powerlessness or the feeling of being an extremely minor factor in a huge system.

McClurg (2003) generalizes this by simply saying the class (or the status) of a person may directly determine his/her likelihood to be involved. He states that people of a higher status (from the middle class to highest) tend to be more politically involved compared to those in the lower status (the struggling or poor), indicating that people who have more access to information are more likely to be politically active. Ironically, Mosby (1898) says that people with higher income tend to be more apathetic due to their respective businesses keeping them busy, and their money blinding them from the truths. This explains how a majority of people of higher socioeconomic status remain silent on public affairs. However, people in the middle class, the ones who earn sufficiently and has undergone formal education, are the ones most likely to be active.

Ahmad (2015) reviews this in his research among university students and concludes that, “respondents with a high level of education have a low level of apathy”. People of the middle class are more likely to be educated and to be informed of the current state of their country, while at the same time able to experience and to see the struggles of the country--- motivating them to voice out or participate, especially in times of dire need. However, with one-fifth of the country’s population under the poverty line, as Rappler (2018) indicates, the ones in most need of help and the ones with the lack of education outnumber the ones who could potentially change the state of apathy in the country. With the current state of the country, one cannot help remaining unheard, or losing hope in the face of the politics in the Philippines. Even now, with the current president making unethical decisions.

The current president of the Philippines is a “strongman”, who knows how to use his word to appeal to the masses. With most Filipinos lacking political education and being easily swayed by words, they are quick to support Duterte—regardless of his brutal ways. In his campaign speeches, Duterte repeatedly emphasized his promise of ending criminality, corruption, and drug-use. ABS-CBN News (2016) quotes his specific words last March 16, 2016 in his campaign rally in Lingayen, “When I become the president, I’ll order the police and the military to find these people and kill them.” However, in his attempt to “cleanse” the Philippines, innocent lives have been taken away. Despite this fact, the president was still able to garner support from the citizens. Flores (2018) cites that the SWS poll conducted in the late June (among 1 200 adults) resulted in a 78 percent satisfaction rate. Such a high rating shows how Filipinos support the killings of their fellow Filipinos---including the innocent ones. Although the high rate may be surprising, the fact that a large number also decided to remain silent on the topic is an even bigger problem.

While a huge part of the population remains, misinformed, another part remains uninterested. Some citizens have a different perspective on politics; they tend to think that it’s not their problem. After all, to them, politics only involves the government. Filipinos tend to think individually, focusing only in their personal lives as they let the authority run the country. Choosing to remain silent or retaining the careless attitude would prove itself problematic, for politics always involves the nation as a whole. The terrifying fact about apathy is that it stems from the “this won’t affect me” thinking; not considering that anything that occurs does affect everyone, just not directly. Politics is not only a matter of the people in power, but also everyone in the country who is under that power. Social involvement plays a vital role in the functioning of a country. McClurg (2003) even states that, “social involvement exposes people to community norms and promotes interpersonal trust, factors which in turn make political involvement more likely”. A country that has citizens actively participating in political discussions, actively voting, and actively speaking out against the problems of the government is bound to be a country leaning towards progress.

Political philosopher Hannah Arendt expounds on the apathy exhibited by individuals towards their societies. Arendt (1958) stated that:

A life without speech and without action, on the other hand -- and this is the only way of life that in earnest has renounced all appearance and all vanity in the biblical sense of the word -- is literally dead to the world; it has ceased to be a human life because it is no longer lived among men.

By “action”, she refers to the activities between people such as interactions or communications. In her words, Arendt aims to emphasize on the importance of societal involvement in politics. She believes that involvement, or “action” is what keeps the society alive. Having politically active individuals contributes to the society’s sustainment; to the sustainment of the “public sphere” (in Arendt’s words). She also believes that keeping the public sphere alive and existing is what gives citizens their freedom. Once the public sphere dissolves, once people stop interacting and stop sustaining it, freedom could then be easily taken away. Such is the case with the current state of the Philippines; once people stop caring for others, once they stop working together to achieve a common goal (of a better country), the people in power could easily take over them and take their freedom away.

One thing that people should keep in mind from Arendt is that the consequences of an individual’s action does not only affect him/her but rather, the society as a whole since this comprises the public sphere. In a person’s decision to support to EJK, one also affects everyone else in his/her community. Likewise, in one’s choice to remain silent, he/she also affects everyone in the public sphere. Stephan & Finlay (1999) states that it is vital to empathize with people, regardless of their different standings or statuses in the society. It is the duty of the privileged to think critically and voice out for the minority. For individuals with the ability to do so, one should carefully consider their choice of supporting a certain decision for whatever one decides upon, also speaks for the unfortunate ones.

Political apathy has already been deeply rooted in the system. Citizens should gradually try to take steps towards a more politically-active society, and a more progressive government. As Mosby (1898) puts it, “when a bad government exists the people have none but themselves to blame, for in them alone is the remedy”. The citizens ought to step up for a change, especially since they are the ones in power. The government may dictate the rules and how to run the country, but the people dictates who gets to be in the government. Perhaps, begin with the proper education. Educate the people of what is truly happening, educate the youth of the importance of politics, tell people of the importance of voting (and voting wisely, more importantly), teach them how to discern fake news from real ones, encourage them to criticize whatever they read and have opinions of their own.

Keep one’s self in the know. Through doing this, people could hopefully gain consciousness of the current issues of the country and would hopefully try to get involved. Make some noise. Let the people protest, let them voice out and fight for what they think is right. One does not necessarily have to participate, but at least have them support and listen to these, instead of simply bad-mouthing them. Make information more accessible to everyone. Let the people easily hear or read of the current state of the country. Let them hear news of the politicians so that they may know who to support.

One may feel powerless in the face of a huge system taking control but, one does not even have to be powerful or extraordinary to make a change; simple acts can create a ripple effect. Loeb (2004) cites Rosa Parks as an example; she stood up to racism starting from a simple act of refusing to give her seat in the bus. Back then, buses in America segregated people in the bus by making blacks sit at the back while whites sit at the front. Prior to that, Loeb also tells of how Parks “had spent twelve years helping lead the NAACP chapter” and that “she'd attended training session at Tennessee's labor and civil rights organizing school, the Highlander Center, where she'd met an older generation of civil rights activists and discussed the recent Supreme Court decision banning ‘separate but equal’ schools”. It was not simple for her but she started off with small steps and finally, her hard work bore fruit; all of these she did without being a person of huge importance. In the same sense, apathy could be stopped once we harbour a passion to get involved, a passion for a better society, and a passion for others.

The difficult fact about the existence of apathy is that it may beget more apathy. A lot of people do not seem to care, so a lot more maybe convinced to do the same. A lot of people are already hopeless, so hopelessness may triumph over the majority. However, one shall not lose hope. Hope is probably one of the most powerful things one might possess in the present times; alongside the capacity to criticize and the courage to speak out. Now that the Philippines is in a critical state, it’s more encouraged that people take part--- participate, get involved in the happenings. Being a simple citizen may make one seem powerless but alongside other people with the same mind set, the masses could effectively fight for what is right and get what they deserve.

Bibliography

ABS-CBN News. (2016, June 29). President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign promises.

Ahmed, S. (2014). Reasons for Political Interest and Apathy among University Students: A Qualitative Study. Politcal Interest and Apathy.

Ahmed, S. (2015). Role of Socioeconomic Status and Political Participation in. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 6-7.

Arendt, H. (n.d.). Action. In The Human Condition (p. 176). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Causes and Consequences of Citizen Political Indifferences . (1960-1984). In S. Bennett, Apathy in America (pp. 270-272). New York: Transnational Publishers.

Flores, H. (2018, September 24). 78% of Pinoys satisfied with drug war – SWS. Philstar Global.

Loeb, P. (2004). The Real Rosa Parks. In P. Loeb, The Impossible Will Take a Little While : A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (pp. 288-292). New York: Basic Books.

McClurg, S. (2003). Socia Networks and Political Participation: The Role of Social Interaction in Explaining Political. Political Research Quarterly, 11-13.

Mosby, S. (1898). Dangers of Political Apathy. The North American Review, 1-3. Retrieved from The North American Review.

Rappler. (2018, May 30). PH economy growing but poverty still high – World Bank. Retrieved from Rappler: https://www.rappler.com/business/203680-economy-poverty-rate-philippines-world-bank-report-2018

Stephan, W. &. (1999). The Role of Empathy in Improving Intergroup Relations.

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endenogatai · 4 years

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ComplyAdvantage nabs $50M for an AI platform and database to detect and stop financial crime

The growth of digital banking has opened up a wealth of opportunities for making the world of finance more accessible and transparent to a greater number of people. But the darker underbelly is that it has also created more avenues for illicit activity to flourish, with some $2 trillion laundered annually but only 1-3% of that sum “caught”.

To help combat that, a London-based startup called ComplyAdvantage, which has built an AI platform and wider database of some 10 million entities to help identify and track those involved in financial crime, is today announcing a growth round of funding of $50 million expand its reach and operations.

Specifically, the plan will be to use the funding for hiring, to invest in the tools it uses to detect entities and map the relationships between them, and to bring on more clients.

“We’ve been focused on more granular analysis and being able to scale to hundreds of millions of searches across our database,” said Charles Delingpole, founder and CEO, said in an interview. “The next phase is more around the network of contacts and more enhanced diligence.” The company today has some 250 staff, mainly in the UK and Romania.

The Series C is being led by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (Ontario Teachers’), a huge pension plan out of Canada (US $155 billion) that is known as a prolific growth-stage tech investor. Previous backers Balderton and Index are also in the round. The company has raised $88 million to date, and while it’s not disclosing its valuation, for some context, it was last valued at around $141 million its last round a year ago, per PitchBook data.

Today, ComplyAdvantage has over 500 customers, primarily financial institutions using it to meet regulatory compliance requirements as well as to reduce their own exposure and risk, providing some automated services to complement (and potentially replace) some of the manual checks that they make to prove you are who you say you are.

It also has a growing business with other groups that are tracking fraud for their own ends, such as insurance companies trying to stem fraudulent claims and government entities. It also has a number of partners that access its database and use that as part of their own solutions (Quantexa, which announced a big funding round of its own last week, is one of those licensing partners).

“A lot of companies in the wider identity space are powered by our data, even if they don’t disclose it,” Delingpole said.

The company had its start originally focusing on the process of helping banks meet regulatory compliance around fraud detection by ingesting and analysing documents provided by customers ahead of opening accounts, initiating larger transactions with new entities and so on. That has taken on a more targeted purpose in recent years as ComplyAdvantage’s database has grown deeper.

Today the core of the business is based around a central database of known money launderers, human traffickers, terrorists, drug lords, and others who exploit financial rails to run illegal operations and make a profit from them.

It’s formed, Delingpole said, by way of “automatically ingesting tens of thousands of datapoints, from websites, national warning lists, linked real-time databases of companies, and various other applications on top of that.” That central database is still growing and Delingpole believes that it’s not unrealistic for it to run to a much higher number in order to get the most accurate picture possible.

“Although we have 10 million today, we want to cover every company and person one day. We think the right number is 8 billion” — that is, the world’s population. “With that larger database we can solve other kinds of crimes too.”

The startup already has a straight channel through to government agencies, reporting connections and discoveries on behalf of their clients directly to them. And to be clear, although there are now strong data protection measures in place in Europe, when people are linked to illegal activity, that puts them on a list that supersedes that. When someone is suspected and is tipped to authorities, that information is kept private.

While all institutions will continue to have teams of people dedicated to risk analysis and investigations into activity, the idea here is to supercharge that work with more data that helps those investigators tackle the greater scale of data in the world today.

“Detecting financial crime in billions of transactions that take place around the globe has become nearly impossible without the application of data science and machine learning. It is this approach that has made ComplyAdvantage into a leader in the category, and the go-to partner for organizations who seek to automate what are still very often manual or inadequate processes,” said Jan Hammer, a partner at Index Ventures, in a statement.

The longer-term opportunity is to build out ComplyAdvantage’s customer base by leveraging information that the company is already surfacing that might be relevant to other verticals.

Insurance is a key example, Delingpole said. “We already see a mention of a person having defaulted on a loan then making an insurance claim,” he said. “We see credit, fraud and ownership data together.”

This, of course, puts the company into close competition not just with others building credit databases but those building strong AI platforms to leverage data to gain deeper insights into seemingly disparate digital actions and to build better pictures of activity on behalf of their clients. That includes not just partners like Quantexa but others like Palantir.

The strength here, said Delingpole, is the sheer size of ComplyAdvantage’s database and its very specific focus on financial crime and how that sits for companies that need to police that, both for their own business health and for regulatory reasons. It’s that focus that has attracted investment.

“ComplyAdvantage offers mission-critical technology solutions for combating financial crime and keeping pace with an ever-evolving regulatory landscape,” said Olivia Steedman, Senior Managing Director, TIP, at Ontario Teachers’. “The company is well positioned to continue its rapid growth as its powerful technology platform transforms the compliance and risk management process for its clients.”

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warninggraphiccontent · 5 years

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28 February 2020

Drinks, data, discussion

We're giving Data Bites a break in March, but if you have 4 March pencilled into your diary, there's still an opportunity to discuss all things data, as we'll be going for drinks instead. If you'd like further details, drop me a line on gavin[dot]freeguard[at]instituteforgovernment[dot]org[dot]uk.

We're also on the lookout for:

Any reflections on the first octet (thanks, Giuseppe) for a short report we're publishing in April

Suggestions for future speakers, and any subject areas you'd like to see covered

Sponsors.

Please do get in touch!

Other things in brief:

A big thank you to Vuelio and an excellent panel for a fun discussion yesterday evening on the small matter of what 2020 holds in store. (No, we didn't stand up for the key change.) More on the hashtag.

A good discussion at the IfG yesterday morning on all things outsourcing transparency. Tl;dr: we need better data and more transparency. Some thoughts and links from me here.

I was quoted in a Times article on how civil servants are using Slack, revealed after a questionable deployment of an FoI exemption (more here, here and here on FoI).

And finally... another plea for help: we're looking for all sorts of frameworks about how to think about data, information, etc. Any suggestions very welcome - via Twitter or the email address above.

Have a great weekend

Gavin

Today's links:

Graphic content

You'll either love it or hate it

Marmot Review 10 Years On (UCL Institute of Health Equity)

Gains in UK life expectancy stall after decade of austerity, report says* (FT)

Austerity blamed for life expectancy stalling for first time in century (The Guardian)

UK politics, people and public services

Deprivation profiles for Welsh Local Authorities (Jamie Whyte)

School funding (Graham for IfG)

Housing (Ian Mulheirn on a BBC briefing)

Where are all the UK's new homes being built? (Centre for Cities for BBC News)

One in 10 new homes in England built on land with high flood risk (The Guardian)

Special advisers (IfG)

Migration Statistics Quarterly Report: February 2020 (ONS)

Study the biggest driver of migration to the UK, but overall levels remain stable (ONS)

Outer London most exposed to new immigration rules* (FT)

Electoral systems across the UK (IfG)

Labour partisans (strong identifiers) are now really distinctive compared with other groups (Paula Surridge)

More (Matt Singh)

GE2019: How did demographics affect the result? (House of Commons Library)

Capital Investment: why governments fail to meet their spending plans (IfG)

The trillion-pound question (Resolution Foundation)

Coronavirus

China fall in coronavirus cases undermined by questionable data* (FT)

13,000 Missing Flights: The Global Consequences of the Coronavirus* (New York Times)

Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak Across the World* (Bloomberg)

US politics

What Defines The Sanders Coalition? (FiveThirtyEight)

Responses to our polling on the Democratic primary (G. Elliott Morris, via Ketaki)

What the Democratic Candidates Discussed During the Debates: Annotated Transcripts* (Bloomberg - and a bit behind the data, via Petr)

Sport

Alex Ovechkin is the eighth member of the NHL's 700-goal club* (Washington Post)

Liverpool have been in a winning position for... (Opta)

Uefa’s ban on Man City does not change football’s inequality* (FT)

Will Liverpool’s machine football conquer America?* (FT)

Globalisation has left lower-league football clubs behind* (The Economist)

How We Analyzed Allstate’s Car Insurance Algorithm (The Markup)

Everything else

Are there too many central bankers?* (The Economist)

The World’s Biggest Economies Get a Jolt of Government Spending* (Bloomberg)

Some lesser known visualisation techniques to show rankings when your data is just too big for a regular bar chart (Maarten Lambrechts)

Graph workflow

What is Complexity Science? (#ComplexityExplained, via David)

Meta data

Data

The Value of Data (Bennett Institute/ODI)

It’s Now or Never for National Data Strategies (Diane Coyle for Project Syndicate, via Graham)

How do we create trustworthy and sustainable data institutions? (ODI)

Data Dialogues' participatory futures projects announced (Nesta)

Three types of agreement that shape your use of data (Leigh Dodds)

Government rejects call for DCMS to audit departments’ data-sharing rules (Civil Service World)

How can data transform our health and care system? (Nesta)

AI, algorithms

The algorithm is watching you (London Review of Books)

Data Analytics and Algorithms in Policing in England and Wales: Towards A New Policy Framework (RUSI)

Rules urgently needed to oversee police use of data and AI – report (The Guardian)

Met Police chief defends facial recognition from 'ill-informed' critics (BBC News)

RUSI Annual Security Lecture

AI = “Automated Inspiration” (Cassie Kozyrkov, Towards Data Science)

Clearview AI hack is sweet irony for privacy advocates (New Statesman)

Suppose you have to choose... (Geoffrey Hinton)

Facial recognition is spreading faster than you realise (The Conversation)

Google AI will no longer use gender labels like 'woman' or 'man' on images of people to avoid bias (Business Insider)

Innovating responsibly with data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) (LOTI)

Digital government

Getting out early feels good: meet the Defra team building a new digital service for GB exporters (Defra)

A thread about UK digital government (warning: contains half finished thoughts) (Richard Pope)

UK digital government in the 2010s - what was it all about politically? (Bennett Institute)

Why Government Leaders Need to Become Digital Leaders (Governing)

Information

Inside the infodemic: Coronavirus in the age of wellness* (New Statesman)

How the Coronavirus Revealed Authoritarianism’s Fatal Flaw (The Atlantic)

Together at last – UK’s planning and housing statistics now in one place (ONS)

About the size of a London flat (ONS)

What Africa Check, Chequeado and Full Fact have learned about tackling bad information (Poynter)

Everything else

The Markup

Slouching towards dystopia: the rise of surveillance capitalism and the death of privacy (New Statesman)

Economists should learn lessons from meteorologists* (FT)

Robert Chote interview: OBR chief reflects on ten years as the nation’s top fiscal watchdog, and how he is still a reporter at heart (Civil Service World)

'I give fusion power a higher chance of succeeding than quantum computing' says the R in the RSA crypto-algorithm (The Register)

Oracle Reveals Funding of Dark Money Group Fighting Big Tech* (Bloomberg)

Katherine Johnson Dies at 101; Mathematician Broke Barriers at NASA* (New York Times)

Katherine Johnson: NASA mathematician and much-needed role model (The Conversation)

Democracy tech will be the next hot investment space (Wired)

The perils of opening the mind (Boston Globe)

Transparency

How can outsourced public services be made more transparent? (Institute for Government)

Grammar school scoring is wrong, says father – and hopes finally to prove it (The Guardian, via Nick)

Financial secrecy is the enemy in the fight against corruption (Thom Townsend)

Who uses WhatDoTheyKnow? (mySociety)

Opportunities

JOBS: NatCen

JOBS: What Works for Children's Social Care

JOB: Head of Information Rights (National Archives)

JOB: Delivery Manager (Convivio)

JOB: Artificial intelligence and algorithms reporter (Washington Post)

JOB: Partnerships and Community Manager – Understanding Patient Data (Wellcome)

JOB: Digital innovation (city) lead (Futuregov)

MoJ on the hunt for Head of Prisons Digital Services to help end reliance on ‘monolithic supplier owned systems’ (diginomica)

FELLOWSHIP: Google News Initiative (with FT, Guardian, Reach, Independent, TBIJ, Telegraph, First Draft News)

Building trust in how you handle data: a hierarchy (ODI)

EVENT: Data Trusts 2020: from theory to practice (ODI)

EVENT: Press Play: the power of data to transform physical activity (Ipsos MORI)

EVENT: FutureFest (Nesta)

And finally...

I graphed out my unaccepted Twitter DM requests (Katy Montgomerie)

The One With All The Polling (YouGov)

Duck (Terrible Maps, via Tim)

Sliding flaws: EU publishes misleading Brexit chart (Politico)

An actual chart from the 1998 Comprehensive Spending Review (via Sukh)

Civil servants discuss the politics of Love Island on Slack* (The Times)

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aretia · 7 years

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Debt and Bankruptcy

When I decided to ask my Wife to marry me I felt pressure to purchase a ring that – at the time – was way too expensive for me. I wasn’t a bankruptcy lawyer at the time. I loved her – so why wouldn’t I do everything I could to show my love? Right? I had access to credit. The bank reassured me that it would be easy to repay. Well, I was wrong. I made a stupid decision. I went into debt. I went into debt at the wrong time for the wrong reason with little to no income to pay it back. And that ring? Well, it was a really nice ring but my Wife later lost it – twice! (….a great story for another day).

The debt for that ring was hard to pay off. I remember struggling to pay back the debt and feeling like a failure. The harder I worked the more difficult it seemed. My entire paycheck was gone before I even received it! I had no control over my finances because the creditor controlled me.

Feeling ashamed for our debt is a real thing.

Don’t believe me? Check this out:

“Money is also intimately linked with our inner lives. Its presence, or lack thereof, has profound physical, mental and emotional repercussions. Perhaps in more ways than we would like to admit, money has tremendous power over us. … Any of the aforementioned negative emotional responses to debt may be serious enough to require medical or psychological intervention.” from debt.org

National Foundation for Credit Counseling – “[C]onducted a poll asking participants to finish this sentence: “I’d be most embarrassed to admit my…” And respondents made it clear that debt shame in the United States is worse than even diet shame. A whopping 37% of people answered that their credit card debt was the most embarrassing, followed by 30% of respondents admitting they wouldn’t want to fess up to their credit score. Weight made only 12% of people sweat, and came in a distant third place.”

I don’t think anyone is immune to money problems. So I assume that you’ve all had some type of similar situation. Being in debt at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. You may or may not be to blame for the money issues (e.g. medical debt), but you know what it feels like to stay up late at night wondering how you’re going to get out of the situation you’re in.

You know what it feels like to feel there is no way out. You know what it is like to think about your debt hour after hour. You lose sleep over it. You think that people close to you judge. You may ever start to think that you are less of a person because of it.

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Now, imagine being in that type of situation and then having a debt collector call you and appear to confirm to you all of the irrational fears mentioned above. You may be told that you are a terrible person. That you did this to yourself. That your family is embarrassed because of you. And for some reason, there are thousands of us who believe these debt collectors! A client recently told me that a debt collector threatened to call the police and have her arrested for not paying a debt! Can you believe that? It happens more than you would think.

It’s been my life’s work and passion to help people realize that no matter what life has thrown their way they shouldn’t feel embarrassed or broken when it comes to debt. I stress over and over to my Clients that they should not despair – there is almost always a way out that doesn’t turn out to be nearly as bad as they might think.

Sometimes the way out is bankruptcy and sometimes it is not. It all depends on the situation. Regardless of whether my clients end up filing for bankruptcy – all of us have the following rights when it comes to harassing debt collectors. To provide some sense of relief, here are some quick basics on the rights you do have:

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) is a federal law that can prohibit debt collectors from using practices that may be abusive, unfair or deceptive. In addition to the Federal law, your state should have a consumer protection statute that can also prohibit deceptive practices as well as unfair or unconscionable practices. You should become familiar with both the FDCPA and your state’s consumer protection law(s). A good way of doing so it to schedule a consultation with a local attorney

Make them prove it: If you receive a phone call from a debt collector demanding payment, demand to receive proof of the debt. Simply paying out of fear can be costly. You may be waiving your statute of limitations defense or paying a debt that doesn’t belong to you! A jury recently awarded a Kansas City woman $83 million against a debt collector suing for wrongfully suing her for a $1,000 credit card bill that wasn’t hers.

Phone Call Limit: I don’t believe any Court has ruled on a specific number of calls per day that would be prohibited. A court would likely look into the situation on a case-by-case basis to determine if the debt collector’s calls were harassing. In general, the FDCPA prohibits debt collectors from calling you with excessive frequency. This would include repeated calls or continuous calls so as to be annoying, harassing or abusive. Obviously, if a debt collector calls with a series of calls one after another this would be prohibited

Contacting you at work: The FDCPA allows a debt collector to call you at work unless the debt collector knows – or has reason to know – that you or your employer prohibit such contact. Simply telling the debt collector to stop calling you at work should do the trick. However, if you can get the request in writing you would be better off

Calling your cell phone: The FDCPA can prohibit debt collectors from calling your cell phone in certain situations. For example, a debt collector cannot call you at an inappropriate time. If you inform the debt collector that the call was made to your cell phone while you are at work this is an inappropriate time. Another federal law, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act can also prohibit certain debt collector contact to your cell phone

There are recent attempts to fix the wrongs committed by debt collectors. Debt collection practices are so horrible that the “U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed new rules for the debt collection industry that include limiting collectors’ communication with debtors.”

Law changes can take time. So, until the laws tighten up on debt collectors use these tools and stop shaming yourself. There is a way out. And the way out will be easier than you think. Don’t let your debt define and control you.

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If you have a bankruptcy question, or need to file a bankruptcy case, call Ascent Law now at (801) 676-5506. Attorneys in our office have filed over a thousand cases. We can help you now. Come in or call in for your free initial consultation.

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tortuga-aak · 7 years

Text

Facebook can't cope with the world it's created

Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Governments in Southeast Asia use Facebook as public evidence of wrongdoing, imprisoning activists and journalists for expressing dissent.

Facebook does not have an office in Cambodia or Myanmar, and only a small office in Thailand despite its popularity in the countries.

Facebook is affecting Southeast Asia politically just as much as the rest of the world, but the tech giant does not seem to act.

As Mark Zuckerberg returns from his latest pilgrimage to Beijing, it's time for him to pay more attention to the countries in Asia where Facebook actually matters.

The Facebook CEO has spent years courting Chinese officials in the hopes of winning admittance to the world's largest internet market. But while he's been beating his head against the Great Firewall, Facebook has swept like wildfire through the rest of Asia, with complicated and sometimes dangerous results.

Asia is now Facebook's biggest user base. That has given the company unprecedented political sway across the continent, where it inadvertently shapes the media consumption of hundreds of millions of people.

The impacts are amplified in the region because vast swathes of relatively new internet users turn to Facebook first as their primary gateway to the rest of the web. Meanwhile, it's become clear that the attitudes and policies the Menlo Park-based company adopted when it was primarily a U.S. social network are inadequate, or even perilous, when applied in authoritarian states, fragile democracies, or nations with deep ethnic divisions.

After months of public outcry in the U.S., Facebook has finally agreed to take seriously charges that the social network played a substantive role in shaping the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

On an earnings call earlier last week, Zuckerberg told investors and reporters "how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust," adding that he was "dead serious" about findings ways to tackle the problem. That would be a positive step — but it must also extend to examining Facebook's tricky impacts in the rest of the world.

I'm writing now from Thailand, and I've recently reported in both Cambodia and Myanmar.

In each of these countries, Facebook has become an accidental political juggernaut — providing public evidence used by authoritarian governments to imprison liberals and journalists for expressing dissent, and amplifying the reach of racist demagogues whose dangerous and false diatribes happen to collect a lot of rabid clicks.

In the early, idealistic days of the internet, "the platforms used to maintain they were paper mills rather than newspapers," says Scott Malcomson, author of Splinternet: How Geopolitics and Commerce Are Fragmenting the World Wide Web and director of special projects at Texas-based Strategic Insight Group. But it's no longer possible to think of the internet as a utopian great leveler, a world-flattener that empowers only the virtuous masses.

The reality is that the effects of the digital revolution are complex and varied around the globe.

And in many parts of the world the stakes include life, liberty, and free speech — the most basic of all political rights. Facebook can no longer deny its moral responsibility to try to understand how cyberspace, law, and politics collide in each of the countries where it operates, nor its responsibility to do something about it.

In Myanmar today, Facebook is the internet.

When you buy a smartphone from a sidewalk vendor in Yangon, the seller will activate a Facebook account for novice users on the spot. Many people don't bother with email if they have Facebook — and many people in Myanmar have multiple Facebook accounts.

This is all a staggeringly recent development. The junta that controlled the country until 2011 kept the price of SIM cards artificially very high to put them out of the reach of most people in Myanmar, and thus control the flow of information.

REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

When I first visited Yangon in spring 2014, only about 1 percent of the population of 52 million had access to the internet. A government official who attempted to defend the ethnic categories listed on Myanmar's controversial census — there was no "Rohingya" category, but only "Bengali" — afterward gave me an informational DVD about the census. Today, 46 million people, or 89 percent of the population, access the internet, mostly through smartphones and mostly through Facebook — and there are far fewer stalls hawking bootleg DVDs on the streets of Yangon.

The rush online has given rise to entrepreneurial dreams and a nascent startup sector, but the internet has also given a megaphone to strident political voices formerly on the margins and made them mainstream.

Ashin Wirathu, a monk known as "the Burmese bin Laden" who has called for the expulsion of the Rohingya population, told BuzzFeed News reporter Sheera Frenkel in 2016 that his anti-Muslim Ma Ba Tha movement had gained national momentum due to Facebook. "If the internet had not come to [Myanmar], not many people would know my opinion and messages like now," he said. "The internet and Facebook are very useful and important to spread my messages," such as his call for boycotting Muslim businesses. Earlier this year, Wirathu was banned from making public sermons, but he continues to operate dozens of inflammatory Facebook pages.

The human-rights crisis in Rakhine state has escalated to what the United Nations' top human rights official declared in September was "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing" — citing the Myanmar military's extrajudicial killings, rapes, and other atrocities committed against the Rohingya population. More than 600,000 refugees are estimated to have crossed over the border into Bangladesh, where they must try to survive in muddy refugee camps with little support from any government.

The roots of ethnic hatreds in Myanmar run deep, but a recent flurry of fake news posts — including doctored photos of Rohingya supposedly burning their own homes or attacking Burmese Buddhists — has stoked popular support, or at least tolerance, for the army's hardline approach. Debunked rumors even appear on the Facebook pages of government officials.

"Facebook has become a bit like an absentee landlord in Southeast Asia," says Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division. "When Buddhist extremists start instigating action against Muslims [in Myanmar], looking around for the local Facebook representative is hopeless — there isn't one. Instead, it's sort of, complain into the void and hope some relief arrives before it's too late — and that's assuming you know a language that relevant Facebook staff are conversant in."

A spokesperson for Facebook confirmed that the company has no office in Myanmar or Cambodia, although it has consultants in each country and a regional office in Thailand. In an emailed statement to Foreign Policy, the spokesperson wrote, "We have clear rules on what can and cannot be shared on Facebook, technology that helps prevent abusive behavior, and we work with safety experts and civil society to educate people about our services."

The spokesperson said that a Facebook "product and integrity research team" would be visiting Southeast Asia this month to assess regional challenges. Internally, Facebook has also begun to grapple with how to identify and define "hate speech" in different countries.

In Myanmar, the word "kalar," or "kala," can be used as a simple prefix to refer to things of South Indian origin, like kala beans — or it can be used as a nasty ethnic slur. Richard Allen, a Facebook vice president for public policy, wrote in a blog post this summer about the tricky case of context-dependent words: "The term can be used as an inflammatory slur, including as an attack by Buddhist nationalists against Muslims. We looked at the way the word's use was evolving, and decided our policy should be to remove it as hate speech when used to attack a person or group, but not in the other harmless use cases."

Implementing the guideline was not so easy. "We've had trouble enforcing this policy correctly recently, mainly due to the challenges of understanding the context," Allen wrote. "After further examination, we've been able to get it right. But we expect this to be a long-term challenge."

It's a positive sign that Facebook is studying the way hate speech spreads online in Myanmar, and elsewhere, but that won't undo the damage that's already happened — or give 600,000 refugees a safe place to call home.

What's different about tech as opposed to other global industries — say, automobiles or pharmaceuticals — is that only after the products are released into the world do the developers gain any real understanding of what the existential problems will be. And then it may be too late.

Jatupat Boonpattaraksa, a Thai student activist who joined several peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in 2014, is in jail right now for content he posted Facebook.

Last December, the BBC Thai published a new documentary about the Thai royal family, which contained unflattering information about the then-Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, now King Rama X. Jatupat, a 25-year-old member of Thailand's New Democracy Movement, shared the link on Facebook and quoted some of its content. The next day he was arrested by plainclothes police officers for violating the country's antiquated lèse-majesté law — which outlaws insulting or defaming the monarchy, and which is selectively deployed by the junta that seized power in 2014 to suppress its critics with a veneer of legality. Thousands of people shared the BBC documentary; most of them were not arrested — but Jatupat's prosecution was used to send a chilling message to others.

The day after his arrest, he was released on a 400,000 baht ($12,000) bail. Jatupat turned to Facebook to joke: "The [Thai] economy is poor so they took my bail money." The court ordered him back to prison for the comment, and his subsequent six requests for bail were denied. In August 2017, he was sentenced to five years in prison for the initial Facebook post; after he pleaded guilty, his sentence was commuted to 2.5 years.

Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

Jatupat's case is hardly unique. Before the 2014 coup, six people were in prison on lèse-majesté charges. The junta dramatically stepped up convictions to silence its critics. Between May 2014 and March 2017, at least 90 people were arrested and 45 of them sentenced, according to research by iLaw, a Bangkok-based nongovernmental organization that tracks legislation. What's more, the majority of these recent cases have involved social media — Facebook posts and tweets — turning offhand remarks into prosecutable offenses. In these recent cases, only 17 percent of those arrested were released on bail before their trial dates. Many cases were tried in military courts.

Why is Facebook so useful to the junta? First, its insistence on a "real name-only" policy makes for easy tracking of dissidents. Even in cases where people successfully mask their names, their web of social connections makes them potentially easy to identify. (In the U.S., sex workers have already found themselves inadvertently exposed by Facebook's data-aggregation and friend suggestions.) Hard-to-navigate privacy settings can mean that what people mistakenly think of as private speech, limited to a small group of friends, is often anything but. "If you make a certain kind of comment online, you can quickly be sent to prison in Thailand," says iLaw researcher Anon Chawalawan.

The news isn't all bad. Over the past five years, Facebook helped enable a groundswell of citizen journalism and activism in Cambodia — but a recent experimental tweak to the timeline function pulled the rug out from under regular news posters, at a time when the political tolerance for free speech was already shrinking.

In January 2014, I met Cambodian monk But Buntenh in a small room on the third floor of a ramshackle office building in Phnom Penh. The founder of the Independent Monk Network for Social Justice, he was seated on an embroidered cushion on the floor and surrounded by electric cords charging his various devices: a laptop, tablet computer, and smartphone.

Buntenh had recently begun to organize what he called "monk reporters" to use their smartphone cameras to document peaceful human rights demonstrations in Cambodia's capital — including garment workers marching to raise the minimum wage and families evicted for development projects marching to demand compensation or adequate rehousing. (Many were living in shantytowns, with blue tarp roofs pulled between tent poles.)

"I am trying to encourage monks to become more political," he told me at the time. "We cannot wait for our political parties to change; we must do it ourselves." Buntenh had by then recruited about 5,000 monks to his watchdog army. Their cause took a grave turn on Jan. 3, when military police opened fireon striking garment workers in Phnom Penh, and at least seven people were killed. Photos, videos, and firsthand reports — from the monk's group and from other witnesses — quickly circulated on social media, especially Facebook and Line. That put pressure on Cambodian politicians and caught the attention of domestic and international news media and the foreign brands — Nike, Adidas, Puma, Gap — that were some of the factories' biggest customers. The minimum wage was eventually raised, although the widows and families of the deceased workers were never compensated for their loss in any significant way.

I visited Cambodia a half dozen more times between 2014 and 2016 to report on the evolution of the country's intertwined social justice movements, collectively referred to as the "Cambodian Spring." The internet was absolutely essential to the minimum-wage and land-rights campaigns, and the sharpest knife in the toolbox was Facebook. Activists turned to Facebook for news reports from the Cambodia Daily and Radio Free Asia, for updates from human rights groups like LICADHO, and for messages from march organizers and journalists. A 2016 survey conducted by the Asia Foundation found that more Cambodians said they got their news from Facebook and the internet than from watching TV. "Facebook became the country's most important source of news, giving the government some headaches as its old information monopoly has been circumvented," says Sebastian Strangio, author of Hun Sen's Cambodia.

Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters

These are darker times now in Cambodia, as earlier this year the government arrested the leader of the main opposition party, expelled the staff of the U.S. State Department-funded National Democratic Institute, and forced the independent Cambodia Daily to shut down because of an unpaid tax bill. Facebook didn't change the political winds, but it did inadvertently squeeze remaining channels of dissent.

It's unlikely that anyone in Silicon Valley was thinking of strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen's political repression when Cambodia was selected in October as one of six pilot countries to test out a new timeline feature, which separates news items from personal posts. A Facebook blog post by Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri explained that the goal was "to understand if people prefer to have separate places for personal and public content."

But the BBC has reported that one unintended impact was dramatically shrinking the number of people who would see published items. "Out of all the countries in the world, why Cambodia? This couldn't have come at a worse time," a Cambodian blogger told the BBC, explaining that the number of people who saw her public video had dropped by more than 80 percent. "Suddenly I realized, wow, they actually hold so much power.… [Facebook] can crush us just like that if they want to."

Because Cambodia is a small market of 16 million people, testing a new feature there may have seemed like a perfectly reasonable choice to an engineering product team.

But when your product is not sneakers or toasters, but the single most important way that people in that country receive news and information, it bears a different kind of consideration.

The Cambodia Daily is now attempting a comeback, and this too will depend on Facebook. The journal has recently started publishing Khmer-language essays and voice pieces through its Facebook page, bearing a new motto, "Second Life: A Life Online." It remains to be seen how successful or long-lived the effort will be, but one hopes that its fate won't be determined by Menlo Park suddenly switching algorithms without notice or consultation. As a former Daily staffer told me — via Facebook, naturally — "I really like the idea, but it's a big risk," adding that the publisher "might get arrested for this … maybe."

These three cases are very different. But they all speak to the need for Facebook to localize, diversify its policies, and decide what kind of values and culture it's trying to promote.

In theory, the fourth-most valuable internet company in the United States — worth more than half a trillion dollars — knows this. In a statement emailed to FP, a Facebook spokesperson wrote, "There is no ‘one size fits all' approach that works everywhere, and we are committed to working closely with local organizations to develop education programs, policies and products that meet people's needs in different parts of the world."

But so far, the social network hasn't lived up to its ideals, says Human Rights Watch's Robertson. "They are going to need to build up their capacity to get further into the game, talking with all the stakeholders from civil society, business and government to ensure they know the political and social context and are prepared to respond in a substantive, rights respecting way." He adds: "People entrust their private and public lives to this platform — so decisions need to have customer buy-in, and communications need to reflect two-way dialogue."

For a long time, Silicon Valley espoused a dogma of information neutrality — claiming, falsely, that search engines and social networks were only impartial tools. But, at a time when algorithms can determine whether an entire country sees genuine news or hate-filled propaganda, this idea can't be sustained. "Move fast and break things" was Facebook's mantra for developers until 2014, signaling the twin totems of speed and aggression that animate many programmers and venture capitalists in the U.S. tech industry. Yet it's a lot less appealing when the things being broken are people.

NOW WATCH: I won't trade in my iPhone 6s for an iPhone X or iPhone 8 — here's why

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