#Maybe because there's no technology and the law is ambiguous

[disappearinginq]

We all know how I feel about romance. However, one near almost always exception to this rule is in westerns.

Specifcally, when the romance is between a gunfighter/outlaw and the woman. Because 99.9% of the time, the story is "I have taken in this sad wet cat of a man who is capable of great murder and because he's Decent Guy Who Must Repay His Debts but lacks any form of useful skill beyond murder, he promptly offers to kill the resident pain in my ass". and the moral quandrary she must answer is "am I still committing murder if I let him do it FOR me as an act of LOVE"?

And the answer is almost always "God is a little fuzzy on the deets, but this guy has pissed off a lot of people and no one is going to press charges"

[nissakii]

Scent. a Haikyu!! Fanfiction pt.16

[want to read all chapters right now? Our fanfictions get updated every monday on our blog, click here to continue reading!]

“Why don’t you tell me something about omegas and how you react to them”. The phrasing maybe wasn’t that ambiguous, but the words were spat out with poisonous intention. Words that should enter your head and linger for a while not until one realizes they consume you. At least that was my intention on that day. I’ve heard enough times that those kinds of mind games were allegedly ‘horrible’ and ‘insulting’, but I never understood what the big deal was. It’s not like I’m taking away a toy from a child. We are all adults here, and life isn’t about who is the nicest. It’s about who succeeds. And if some little mind game is what gives me the head start. I’ll do it. Albeit possibly that I lost my chances to be friends with Oikawa, I must admit my words to him were pretty harsh, I felt like he took it well. Which isn’t good. He wasn’t fazed by it at all, I had noticed his smile maybe twitching a little but he only retorted with a smart explanation of how natural pheromones worked and made me look like an idiot country bumpkin. I still remembered his smile as he asked me if I understood what he meant, and maybe I was just angrier than usual but I could swear he was being all smug about it too. So I found someone who was willing to play the same game as me. Hm. The other interesting thing on that day, which keeps replaying in my head, was that omega girl. It was honestly shocking to scent an omega for the first time. My curiosity ran with it and I was glad she was fine with me being so close, I have heard stories in which omegas retorted with less ‘accommodating’ ways. I even caught her gaze after a lecture of mine, but she didn’t budge and I wasn’t up for conversation. Still, the way she looked at me after coming for Oikawa was insane. She didn’t yell or tried to fight me, she didn’t shy away either. She just looked at me. And it was terrifying. Her eyes were piercing through me as if to provoke me to continue, her scent had doubled up in intensity which I wasn’t expecting at all, and her sweet caramel scent suddenly burnt to crisp. Her voice was sharp but not too emotional, it was distinct for me to listen to. “I would ask you to mind your own business”. Stone cold, I gotta say. It made me take a step back and raise my arms in defense with a smile and the situation immediately deescalated, Oikawa had caught her scent and was just as aggravated and I realised the rumours I had heard were partly true, but the incident seemed a lot more severe than I had imagined. I mean it was the first thing I heard when I came here, it was on social media and every other first year told me the same thing. “It’s good you’re an alpha, the rest don’t have it easy here”. Maybe I really shouldn’t have meddled too much, it’s still a school I really wanted to go to and Osamu is here as well, so I really shouldn’t destroy my own chances that much. The caramel girl was technically right, I should mind my own business. But was that fun? Nah. The door creaked open as what I would assume could only be my brother entered the dorm room I was in. “Samu!”, I chimed excitedly. … I only pushed in the door a little bit and already heard my brother squeak my name. “Samu!”, he chimed and I entered the dorm with a greeting. “Ossu”, I placed the plastic bag with some utensils I needed for my classes on my bed and looked at Atsumu sprawled on his side. The dorm room we were given was actually quite small. I was used to having a bit more space to myself, but with the scholarship I was glad I atleast got a twin room with my brother. Although when I looked at him I sometimes thought differently. The two beds were pushed to the far end of the room and to the walls on the sides, a desk separating the space in between. In front of Atsumu’s bed, which was the one on the right, the other desk was situated which was supposed to be mine. I remember when we moved in here the dorm looked horrendous, but with enough cleaning and the right duvets and covers it felt a lot better. And of course my side was a lot neater than his. “S’that my

shirt?”, I recognized the pattern on the front and he merely scoffed at me. “Uh, no?” “Really?” “Uh”, he intelligently mused to himself and I sighed. “Nevermind, you take what ya want anyways. Make sure to wash it later, I gotta head to the library”, I left the bag with the supplies on my bed and instead fished out a list with the literature I had to get. “Alright, see ya” “See ya”, I retorted and headed back outside. I grabbed the list in my hands and tried to check which building I had to go to. “Why are there multiple libraries?” Linguistics? Human sciences? Okay I definitely don’t have to go to the law department. With at least twenty minutes of running around campus I finally went up to someone outside and asked for help. “Oh yeah that’s pretty confusing I guess, uh so you need to search for building 4, the library should be the glass building right next to it!” Nodding and bowing with a slight smile I made my way to the mentioned building. The way over there was very pretty, the pathways went under huge trees and the ambiance felt really good, but I had no time to walk around exploring. Finally, I looked at the beautiful building in front of me. Still belonging to the campus, but it was obvious that it was either newly built or otherwise rebranded. The walls showed a tinted version of the life inside, the higher stories dimly shining in a warm light. I approached the entrance and two huge doors slid open when I wanted to step inside. Murmuring was to be heard everywhere, and for the fact that it was a library I was a little shocked at the rumbling noise. As if I was entering a mall, tall metal gates that I had to go through demanded my student ID. I saw other students move swiftly between the poles and swish their ID quickly at a screen and I tried to emulate the gesture, completely overwhelmed with all of the technology. With I beep the gates opened and I stood still to admire the interior of the building. Standing in the middle, and elevator right in front of me lead to the different levels of the library. When I looked to the right I saw a reception and an information center, and to the left the toilets and another gate leading to a cafeteria where to be found. Stepping into the elevator I looked at the signs that signalled me which level I had to go to and I pressed the button. Floor 7 out of 12. This crap is huge! More and more students entered and left the elevator again, stopping at every floor to change its inhabitants. After some minor bumps in the road, I finally got to my desired floor. When the metal doors opened, I finally felt the silence. Shelves and more shelves of book were to be seen, students rummaging through them to find what they were looking for. Maybe it was the fact that the library was so huge, but i didn’t see too many people here. Looking up at a sign that read “Arts and human sciences” I knew I was at the right place. Walking inside I started to look for my books. Big mistake. The labels on the books were highly confusing, and I had no idea where to look. I peered at my list again. Introduction into Culinary Arts vol.1 – [1998-TR-CA-54] Huh? What about the good old alphabetization? I had no idea what those codes meant, and after only finding books on history and other weird subjects, I had to check for help. I went back to the entrance of the library and followed the arrow sign that said ‘reception’ until I found a desk with a young woman sitting behind it. She was focused on her laptop, quickly typing away as I approached her. “Hi”, I whispered and she shot up in her seat. “Oh, sorry, uhm can you help me find these books please?”, I whispered again as she visibly relaxed and smiled lightly. “Yeah, sorry I’m a bit jumpy today. What books are you looking for? Wanna read them here or rent them?”, she asked in a hushed voice and I realised I didn’t have to whisper all too much. “Rent please, but I have no idea where to find these. The codes are really weird”. She stood up from her stool and walked around the desk towards me. “Are you new

here? The codes are confusing at first but you’ll get used to it”. I nodded and handed her my list, and she concentrated on that for a moment before showing me something. “See that code? It’s made so you can narrow your search. [1998-TR-CA-54] means you look for the shelf number 54, then for CA which stands for culinary arts, then the authors initials which are ‘Tatum Rebecca’ and then the release year 1998”, her fingers pointed on each letter combination and then to the shelves around us. Puzzled, I still looked at the myriad of shelves in front of me and she must’ve caught my expression because she stifled a laugh and took a step towards the shelves. “Want me to help you?” I nodded and she replied with a hum as she started walking. “The library gets a little confusing at first”, she mused as I walked next to her, “I think I might’ve seen you on a library tour before? Are you new?” I nodded, “I just moved here, so everything is a little weird to me still”. Her eyes crinkled shut as she stifled another laugh and suddenly looked a bit taken aback, she looked to the floor and back up at me but not fully, “Yeah I felt the same when I came here for my first semester”. She turned around to face me and I looked down at her nameplate. Asami. Beta Committee. I pointed at the name plate with a cocked brow, “so you’re a beta?” She stopped in her tracks and gave me a look. “Uh yeah, I am”, she followed my gaze and suddenly started talking really fast, “Oh my god! I didn’t even introduce myself. You’re new you must be taking everything in still!” “It’s fine, I mean I saw it on your nameplate. Is Asami okay?”, I inquired and she nodded lightly with a shy smile. “I’m Osamu Miya, nice to meet you”, I slightly nodded my head as well and she beckoned me closer to follow her. As she walked through the shelves and pathways she explained more about the library. There were way too many faculties and abbreviations to remember, but luckily they hung up a lot of flyers that showed which abbreviations stood for which topic. I only needed a couple of these, but after finding the first two books my head started to buzz with all the information. “And here you have the department of culinary arts, its quite remote from the rest of the library but I guess you’ll have your peace and quiet here!”, Asami chimed happily, her voice raising a little bit as there were almost no students here. It was actually quiet nice to have no background noise. It reminded me of home, when I walked to school and I left a sleeping Atsumu behind. The breeze catching my face as I made my way to school. I hummed and looked around to locate the last books on my list. For my business and economics classes we had already found the book I needed, well Asami found them, but this time I tried to get the book on my own. Walking towards the shelves before the beta could even move, I already found the correct number out of sheer luck and started to check for the right letter combinations. I felt Asami roaming behind me, I could smell her rosey scent behind my form but she didn’t budge. “Ah”, I exclaimed as I pulled out the book I needed with a little too much excitement. She clapped quietly and nodded proudly. “You caught on really quickly! We could use a bit of help from someone like you in the committee!” “The beta committee?”, I asked with my index finger pointing to her name tag again. “Yeah! We always have a place for new students, and you could even work here in the library”, she concluded and I smiled a little. “Well I am flattered I guess, but I am not a beta”. She staggered for a moment and looked at me confused, until I saw her nostrils flare up and she held her hand to mouth as she realized her mistake. “Uh, uhm I- I’m sorry I-“, she started stuttering and I cut her off with a relaxed shake of my head. “No worries, I actually get that a lot”. “Ugh, no it’s not fine, I shouldn’t have assumed your secondary gender that so weird”, she slumped a little and took a step back, her eyes not even reaching my face anymore. “It’s no big deal, I get

this often even at home. People think my scent is a bit more subdued so” She nodded but still looked away, a weird silence brooding between us now. It’s really not that big of a deal though. “Oi!”, hushed yell came from the door and we both looked towards it to find a lean man leaning onto it. “The reception was empty, what are you doing?” “Oh, no”, the beta mused and clasped her hands together anxiously before looking back at me, still more distant than at the beginning of our conversation. “I’m sorry, that’s Akaashi I have to go back to the reception!”, and she turned around to meet the other guy before I could say anything. She was so jittery all of a sudden. “Uh, yeah”, I mumbled back as I watched her interact with said Akaashi, before I turned back to my list. They both left soon after that, and I was left alone in the silence of the shelves trying to find the few books I had left. After a couple of minutes and endless shuffling, I counted off my list and stopped with a satisfied huff when I realized I had everything I needed. The books were actually quite bothersome to carry, so I snagged one of the book trolleys that were laid out to help with transporting the literature and leisurely pushed it next to me as I approached the reception again. This time, there were a couple of students standing around the computer, and I curiously walked closer. “No way, I can’t take Thursday. I have extracurriculars there!”, another male beta I assumed argued with Asami who was typing frantically on her computer. “Well I don’t have any other slot for you, I’m sorry. It’s either Thursday for you or Akaashi, and Akaashi is already taking Friday this time”, she mumbled a bit more annoyed than I expected. She really was different when calm. I already released when she assumed I was a beta that she felt comfortable, but when she suddenly drew back I felt her environment must be very precise for her to relax. Good thing Tsumu isn’t here. “I can take both days”, Akaashi mumbled, and I took another step and cleared my throat to interrupt. “Sorry, can I just check these out?”, I asked and Akaashi immediately nodded and typed up something into the computer even though Asami was still sitting in front of it. As a result she retreated into herself with a squeal and grumbled when Akaashi slightly pushed away her swivel chair. “Can you give me the books you wanna take with you?”, the aloof beta asked politely and I pushed the books towards him. As he scanned every item on the list, I felt the eyes of the other male beta on me. I wasn’t sure if I had seen him before somewhere, but he looked at me with slanted eyes before scrunching his nose and inhaling my scent. He suddenly calmed down a lot and even smiled a little, as if his cause for concern was suddenly gone. “You’re new here aren’t you? What’s your name hm?”, he tilted his head and leaned forward on the counter. “Uh, yeah. I’m Osamu Miya, nice to meet you”, I prompted back and the beta nodded, like he was pleased with the answer. “Any interest in joining the beta committee? It’s very-” Asami nudged his arm and furiously shook her head to signal something and I couldn’t help but stifle a laugh. Is it really that ambiguous? “What Asami? I’m trying to recruit fresh meat here! We need the help!” “Actually I am not a beta. I’m an alpha”, I retorted lamely, and I felt a twinge of surprise when Asami’s eyes shot up to me in fear. “What is it?”, I asked and felt annoyance crumbling up slightly. “Oh”, the beta I was talking to shot back with venom in his voice and Akaashi only sighed while typing in codes for the books,” and alpha are you?” I nodded with scrunched eyebrows. What is he getting at? “Well, then you can leave”, she kissed his teeth and looked to the side as if disgusted. “Futakuchi! You can’t say that! It’s borderline discrimination at this point!”, Asami pulled at the guys sweater and he broke away but kept looking at her as he spoke. “No way! We have enough alpha’s strolling around terrorizing us! What about us hm?!” “Don’t mind him. He’s very”,

Akaashi looked at Futakuchi and then back at me with disdain written in his features, “passionate”. “It’s about beta’s not getting the recognition they deserve! Beta supremacy!”, he whisper yelled at Asami who only sank her head into her hands. Beta supremacy? Somehow that didn’t feel right to me. Personally I didn’t take much care into being an alpha, the whole secondary gender thing wasn’t of much interest anyways. I generall talk to the people I wanna talk to, and when it comes to more serious relationships, I tend to not have a type. Although most Alpha’s go for omegas and vice versa, and most beta’s tend to stay in their own bubble, I felt it was almost restricting to think about that when choosing somebody. “Pay them no mind please”, Akaashi pushed the rented books towards me and I pulled them towards the small trolley with a nod. “You can take that one to your dorm, but please bring it back as soon as you can”, the calm beta continued and I thanked him with another nod. That Futakuchi guy still kept on glaring at me, while Asami swatted at his arm when she realised I stared too. “Yeah I’ll bring it over later, thank you”, I looked at the beta girl until she finally looked back and thanked her as well. She nodded and I turned around to get back to the dorm. My phone buzzed before I could even start moving and I checked my text messages. Tsumu: bring me pudding pls? You’re insufferable… Tsumu: thx o3o With a sigh I pushed the phone back into my jeans pocket and left the library behind.

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[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Can you do the Alien? The first time they meet Ax is game changing.

Short opinion: This book, right here, is when everything starts to get a hell of a lot more complex than “good vs. evil.”

Long opinion:

I completely agree that #8 is a game changer.  It’s our introduction to a lot of themes and plots that are going to carry through to the end of the series.  Andalite culture as well-meaning but rotten to the core with imperialist attitudes.  Even yeerks being willing to join the resistance if given sufficient reason to do so.  Humans as the locals on a valuable piece of real estate that titans clash over.

Cates has analyzed Animorphs as a post-Vietnam War piece of American literature, and this is really the first book to bring out those themes.  It’s an oversimplification to say that the humans are the Vietnamese, the andalites are the Americans, and the yeerks are the Chinese.  Just like it’d be an oversimplification to say that the humans are the Koreans, the andalites are the democratic capitalists, and the yeerks are the communist alliance.  Or an oversimplification to say the humans are the civilians of North Africa, the andalites are the Allies, and the yeerks are the Axis powers.  So on and so forth.  There’s a pattern that repeats itself throughout human history, and I don’t think Animorphs is doing anything as trite as allegory.

Anyway, I also think that there’s a reason this theme doesn’t come until we’re eight books into the series.  First, we do have to understand why the human protagonists are trying to help the andalites at all.  That’s why we get Elfangor, portrayed as noble and brave and self-sacrificing.  We get all the andalites in the GalaxyTree showing up to help Earth, and most of them dying as a result.  We get Ax, a loyal and kind and likable all-around precious cinnamon roll.  First, we also have to understand why the human protagonists are opposing the yeerks.  That’s why the plots of #1, #2, #5, and #6 are all about how yeerk infestation destroys families.  That’s why the plots of #3, #4, and #7 focus on the impact of the yeerk invasion on the rest of the planet.  #2 and #6 especially have scenes with All The Body Horror on what it’s like to be a yeerk host, important to establish the stakes of the series.

So, in context, #8 doesn’t make us throw up our hands and go “there’s no point to anything if EVERY side is this flawed!”  At least, it’s never done that to me.  It instead suggests that the battle is still worth fighting, but that there are a lot of questions about how to fight left unanswered.

And this book does complexify the narrative of “andalites good, yeerks bad,” irreparably so.  It’s the first time we see yeerks who care about each other, including one yeerk willing to risk his life sabotaging Visser Three in order to avenge a lost loved one.  All of a sudden we’ve got andalites — andalite authorities, no less — who are more concerned with making their own species look good than with protecting humanity.  Ax’s conversation with Lirem foreshadows the fact that the andalites consider ALL LIFE ON EARTH to be an “acceptable loss” in the war.  Even Visser Three gets complexified the moment we meet Alloran.  Throughout #8, Ax questions the humans’ morality in turn, from Marco’s machiavellian tendencies to Jake’s naïve optimism.  A picture is starting to emerge, and it’s exactly like Jake says: “we humans are just pawns in this big game between you andalites and the yeerks. We’re just ammunition in this war” (p. 58).

And then we learn about the andalites’ hand in creating the Yeerk Empire.  Maybe more importantly, we learn that the andalites took exactly the wrong lesson — never trust anyone with our tech ever again — from the situation, effectively doubling down on the mistakes they made when they treated the yeerks as “lesser.”  Then, Ax realizes, the andalites went on to learn more bad ideas from the loss of the hork-bajir (even before he knows about the quantum virus), because the only real takeaway from that defeat was that the hork-bajir weren’t andalites and didn’t deserve andalite help.  Ax actually speculates about that battle: “Lirem had been true to the laws and the customs. What if he hadn’t? What if he had given the hork-bajir advanced technologies? What if he had taught the hork-bajir to build spaceships?” (p. 124).  He’s starting to realize that treating other peoples like pawns or natural resources is a good way to create enemies, not to defeat them.

Ax’s character journey in #8 is all about learning to bend and break the rules.  He breaks the big rule of Seerow’s Kindness, but he also breaks his own policy of “Jake = Prince” first when he confronts Jake outside the high school, and later when he goes behind Jake’s back to attack Visser Three alone.  He’s learning that he’s in a more messy and morally ambiguous fight than he first realized, and he’s learning how to navigate that world on his own.

[lightshielded]

today i would like to talk a little about the late queen catherine lightshield, the late - king jarvan lightshield iii and the little riot shone for a brief moment in the slight development of their characters and how this light needed to be smothered to continue the story they wished. this is not a post to condemn riot for this decision, for the reason for doing so is understandable and they are not champions so less important, but a post to talk more about what i personally theorise why these decisions came about during maybe character development and what would have happened in lore had riot not made these decisions ( in short, lore would be nice but more boring as the champions would be doing nothing ) and my reasoning behind this. -- also i know it is entirely possible that they did this purely for drama and i know that jarv is my muse and thats basically all he is used for by this point but look this was fun and interesting and i just like the two characters a lot -- so this is just a little brain storming “what if” if you will, so i hope you enjoy if you continue to read along. part one is my rambling explanation, part two is a what if at the end.

MY RAMBLING

in previous lore ( meaning lore with new lore demacia but prior to recent changes with new champions ), the crown royals of demacia were never quite developed, there was ultimately no need. their ambitious and scarce mentions in their son’s lore gave way to reasonable assumptions of their character and we can assume they were very generic demacias. would could also imagine them both as characters which actually opposed their son in ideology based on the state of this demacia ( the laws were closer to the ones instated by most recent lore jarv with the hardest line mage suppression ).

however, with the newer lores for demacia, riot ultimately wanted to provide xin.zhao with a backstory to fit into the new lore and this is the first large change. now while this lore was not released first, we can assume they were worked on in development together due to the closeness of their update times and this proves a crux to my point. prior, jarv ii was the one who had rescued him from noxus but with the new lore this is jarv iii. now we can assume this is for age reasons as well as making more things relevant in lore ( tho jarv ii does get a nod to in the story and i do like this fact ) by having all active characters closely tied to each other. now we know OLDEST lore demacia raided noxus to free some of their slaves, this is not possible with new lore demacia as they don’t raid nor are they close enough that they can just grab their army and take it to the heart of noxus casually. so noxus had to be the aggressor for it to work, hence xin.zhao’s position as a slave soldier in this story.

but, this inspires a first change in the character of jarv iii - to accept a stranger, a noxian soldier, into demacia he had to be significantly compassionate. so by establishing the king as someone kind enough to release noxian slaves, prisoners of war, and entrust himself to one, to call one friend. BUT this essentially sets up a very kind man who is enforcing harsh, prejudice based laws on a population of his people. obviously, this is a paradox and riot also noticed it and changed it. and with the newer bits of lore we find out multiple new things: 

one) this newer lore jarv iii didn’t teach his son to be suspicious of magical beings. this was mentioned before in his old lore that jarv iv was like most demacians on this and this part was removed on revision, even then enforced that this was not true by his uncle remarking on that is was very unlike him to be so during aftermath. so we can assume he was at least not vocal about his opinions or was genuinely trying not to be prejudiced. two) the laws of stone were introduced and presented us with a not much better but step in the right direction set of laws for demacia which is implied to be done by jarv iii. through they were subsequently slowly undone by the council of nobles as seen in a couple mentions in lore of how the laws were tightening in ways the lightshields disliked and how the king had been giving the council more power. three) the king welcomes shyv when it was open that she was a dragon and the nobles questioned his wisdom in it which meant he openly supported the idea of his son having a dragon guard. (old lore had her hiding it and people just thought she looked weird and were super sus of her). four) all the extra lore we got with the royal family publicly helping mage exiles and meeting with them on conference and other things and all.

essentially made him a king trying to be good for mages. in addition to these changes they wanted to make him a likeable person as well. they worked this into jarv iv’s lore by him being genuinely happy for his sons return rather than emotionless, mentioning how his father genuinely cared for him for one and basically having him present. but in the development of his father they also wished to develop his mother. previously it had be a loveless arranged marriage which tied them together but i guess they figured that wasn’t the route they wanted to go now with this new kinder and more emotional jarv iii so they had them romantically inclined with court whispers, gossip and all. so given this opportunity they went to develop her a little bit, giving catherine strong leadership traits and they likely decided they wanted to show these as plainly and briefly as possible, which apparently in demacian lore is how quickly you can shut down a arms race. which she did instantaneously essentially. she basically kisses the king and said stop and the entire nation was like oh shit we need to stop. no arms race civil war for a good spot near the king’s ear. so, yeah, a queen who can shut down civil war and convince nobles to her side every easily that is much beloved by the nation.

in short, they fixed the paradox of a nice king being cruel to a nice king trying to be good. and then added a powerful queen ruler who stands at his side who is greatly loved and just as influential. HOW LOVELY! however, this causes the issue of why could the good of a now markedly feudal kingdom ( they were constitution monarchy in old lore and still kinda are cause the council and they elect the king but we aren’t here to talk about that ) not just make the decisions they wish? i believe this was their point of realisation of their mistake. the realisation that these two would just do what they want, and that the entire lore of demacia for the 26 years prior would be altered. you have an idealistic king and a queen whom the entire nation adores and bends knee to? they SHOULD be able to do everything they want. and likely did some as it is mentioned the king wants his son to finish what they started and achieve his dreams. have to start something to finish it.

alas, by wanting to develop these characters for the sake of champions like jarv and xin, the essentially wrote themselves into a space of, if they continue to exist we can’t have the story we want. so they basically stopped them existing. first they killed of catherine, in all previous lores as far as we know she was alive just wasn’t romantically interested in her husband. but they did royal stuff together, watched her son get almost killed with a poison crossbow once. good ol days. i imagine they were like good business partners. but for the first time in all lores they had her killed, removed her ( they also removed jarv’s capture by noxus too which has existed just as long but thats a discussion for another day ). now this one move is easy since they put fault on the time period, its olden days in terms of technology in demacia, and unfortunately deaths in childbirth were common. so a very easy disposal which not only removed the civil war ending queen but also injures the motivation of the king by making him emotionally worn out ( in an already emotionally taxing job )

essentially, in one fell swoop they pushed back the pro mage changes to be completed by jarv iv based on his lore as had been written. which is then removed from him and he is given the role of the villain with the comic. funny that if they had just left them both ambiguous they could have just easily had the king the villain cause there wouldn’t have been paradoxes. though i’m not sure how xin.zhao would have gotten in... maybe he escapes and they find him fighting noxians. seems alright? oh well at least we get the cute uncle/nephew relationship in this version of lore. this gives me strength. but ye, so it gets interesting from here because you can sit and just think, what would have happened if she didn’t die?

WHAT IF?

for one, the power couple would have been able to do so much more. i like to think they would have been slowly working down the laws for the betterment of their people and since jarv is not emotionally weakened and lady catherine has the entire council at her beck and call, there would be little resistance amongst the nobility. slowly the laws would lower from mageseekers having to register all emergent mages and ensuring they don’t slip up or they’re out to all emergent mages having to attend classes with members of the lightbringers to learn how to have basic control of their magic -- something they are all too happy to do for they have been doing their best without aid until now -- this would then evolve to allowing more experienced mages to take these classes as an assistant and then a teacher, the lightbringers allowing their secret inner circle to take these places and serve in the open for the first time in so long.

 slowly mages are given voices in positions of leadership and exiles from “slip ups” are lowered as mages are not repressed and know how to control their magic. this would change to not fearing slip ups as use of magic is less restricted for people are less likely to fear what they understand, magic usage becomes legal on school grounds then ever growing territories, eventually towns would have mage quarters where all manor of magic is permitted. although greater usage of magic would likely not be permitted in older parts of cities as it is known to discolour walls and there is only so much you can replace in instance of greying and flaking. got to keep it simple around the grander structures. but maybe over time the mortar can be replaced to not contain petricite, or maybe the bold amongst them might design builds intended to be saturated so their ceilings flake free and reveal the magic like opals within.

slowly magic is phased into the way of life, a smithy apprentice might be permitted to light his own flame without a flint or builder help ease the load of stone. and then ( as jarv seems to have been doing with shyv prior to the comics ) mages might be permitted to don the blue if they so wished, integrating magic into what demacia sees as their pride and joy. their heroes. the mageseekers would become more a force for protecting against mages in war rather than at home, a battalion rather than a power hungry force governed by a few. or maybe they would remain a police force, part of the city guard like any other just they possess protection from magic so are called for a mage criminal while the non magic protected are called for a person swinging a sword. right armour against the right weapon. also as likely, they will lose their name, and their tools simply be another weapon to the people that wear the blue. the tainted history of the name remembered but not allowed to continue on.

slowly, it becomes a nation that embraces magic rather than shuns it out of century old fears. together it is a country that could have healed its wounds both given and inflicted on each other. and our beloved champions could have grown up in a much brighter demacia. frankly, i imagine that within the 20 years from finding xin to the “now” of this universe, much of this could have been accomplished given what we know of them. i do hope, once all the pain and suffering if through in our version of the lore that maybe these steps could be walked by the true of our champions.

[fixomnia-scribble]

Midterm Review

One of my students wrote most of her Forensic Science midterm answers in rap form, and I’m thinking I want to surprise her with a list of contacts in the Communication, Arts & Technology faculty who are willing to video her UP for free, for their term keystone project. I mean: she formulated her responses and then converted them into rap on the fly, in the same space of time in which some people barely banged out point form answers.

Another one disclosed his rather serious medical status after getting a lower mark than he hoped due to a flareup on exam day - not as an excuse, but because he didn’t want me to think it was because I hadn’t taught him well. He promised to take the extra hour he’s entitled to for the final exam, anyway.

Another one politely but assertively challenged every one of the few deductions she received, arguing not only the meanings of her word choices but the need for more specificity and no ambiguity of language in questions used in short-answer exams. I said I’d happily work with her on alternative wording suggestions, and introduce her to the prof. (She’s heading for Law School.)

Another one, who never says a single word in class, absolutely smashed the midterm and has one of the tightest and most elegant argumentative essays in the works, on a wrongful conviction case. English is her third language, or maybe fourth. She simply doesn’t have time for idioms or lazy language habits, but gets right to the core idea.

My kids, I love them.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING PROBLEM

But by Galileo's time the church was in the throes of the Counter-Reformation and was much more worried about unorthodox ideas. The situation now is like it was with crack in the 1980s: we've invented terribly addictive new things, and we needed to buy time to fix it. So long as you were careful not to get sucked permanently into consulting, this could cause some friction. That makes it more persuasive to people who like unions, because it changes too fast for that to be possible for several people to work for a company they have qualms about. The hackers who become famous tend to become famous by random accidents of PR. Fit meetings with investors into the spare moments in your development schedule, rather than dutifully in scheduled little slices. Even if you're designing something for the most sophisticated users, though, that all other things being equal, a company has to be under the control of a single person to be any less committed to the business.

The situation is different in phase 1, which should be no more than a startup that seems like it's going to be than the worst? I feel obliged at least to try. Did we actually dress like that? All right, you bastards, bring it on. The best way to force them to act is, of course, but that's not the limiting factor on the number of officially sanctioned projects that manage to do all eight things wrong. You just can't expend any attention on it. This apparently random collection of annoying habits has a single explanation: the power of their brand, but the dumb joke. The most dangerous form of stupid comment is not the main thing they want. If you're experienced at negotiations, you already know most of what you need to raise. The reason there's a convention of being ingratiating in print that are not only new, but it has to be finite, and the headline read, I think, is that one of the biggest unexploited opportunities in startup investing right now is angel-sized investments made quickly. For example, I've written a few macro-defining macros full of nested backquotes that look now like little gems, but writing them took hours of the ugliest trial and error, and frankly, I'm still not entirely sure they're correct.

And since I know from my own experience that the rule against buying stock from founders is a stupid one, this is actually good news for investors, and negotiating with them. Typefaces to be cut in metal were initially designed with a brush on paper. Redesigning code with several authors is like changing laws; redesigning code you alone control is like seeing the other interpretation of an ambiguous image. An angel round is not an all or nothing thing like a series A, there's obviously an exception if you end up raising a series A will emerge out of those conversations, and these rules even cover what to do if you're not a hacker, you can't say. That makes it more persuasive to people who like unions, because it doesn't feel like procrastination. And I was a Reddit user when the opposite happened there, and the terms end up being whatever the lawyer considers vanilla. So we've probably only discovered a fraction of what we eventually will. But there is another set of customs for being ingratiating in print that are not only new, but actually worth solving. It wouldn't work otherwise. Most startups operate close to the limits of your capacity. And surprisingly often they succeed. The top 10 startups account for 8.

When you're young, especially, you often find yourself working on stuff you don't really like—because it seems impressive, for example, is a pruned version of a tree that in the early 1980s, when companies like VisiCorp showed that although the words software and publisher fit together, the underlying concepts don't. At the start of a project, because initially the most important skills founders need to learn. This technique won't find us all the answers, though. It's only by looking from a distance. In that situation, even the CEO. C, Lisp, and Smalltalk were created for other people to use. In fact, you can't tell a great hacker, the way to the bed and breakfast market. In every period of history, the answer is no, you might want to stop and take a rest? That's a problem, because that means we're going to have to be inferior people. I notice something surprising, it's usually very faint at first.

And if trouble with investors is probably to partition the company: have the smart people work as toolmakers. In the best case, though. I asked. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as yellowist, as is anyone suspected of liking the color. You can also get intros from other people. Plus series A terms usually give the investors a veto over various kinds of important decisions, including selling the company. I make a new version almost every day that I release to beta users.

I've used both these excuses at one time or another. Deal terms with angels vary a lot. Maybe the solution is to talk to the other. But there is a Michael Jordan of hacking, no one knows, including him. But in writing and painting they're mostly internal; the obstacle is your own obtuseness. To the extent that valuations are being driven up by price-insensitive VCs, they'll fall again if VCs become more like super-angels are looking for investors you want to grab coffee, for example, all other things being equal, a company has to be under the control of a single person to be any good. Nearly all investors, including all VCs I know, one thing they mentioned was curiosity.

What are conventional-minded people afraid of saying? And while most investors are influenced by how interested other investors are all subject to the same forces. The best way to begin may not be quite as smart or as well connected as angels or venture firms; and they may not always be. All the great hackers I know despise them. Reality can be messier. While writing the prototype, the group has been traversing their network of friends in search of angel investors. Often they are, they're not powerful enough to turn back the evolution of technology. So VCs who invest in angel rounds—partly because they deliberately mislead you. Assume the money you need, you can at least take comfort in the thought that the same thing happened at Google. In the startup world.

[hub-pub-bub]

The European Union’s copyright directive finally passed last week, with 56% of the European Parliament vote, after several rounds of significant changes to the text. On its way to final passage, the controversial Article 13 — now Article 17 — went through yet another round of changes that are worth discussing here. Two issues in particular stand out: how the law will affect startups and niche-market content services, and the nature of copyright filtering requirements.

The first issue is about how this law will affect startups and online communities that serve niche audiences by imposing legal risks and costs of licenses or filtering technology. The final text attempts to be more specific about the types of online services that are exempt from Article 17. But it ends up both ambiguous and needlessly burdensome on startups.

On the one hand, the text now includes elaborate definitions of online services to which the law is supposed to apply that are intended to protect small and niche-market services by writing them out of the law. But on the other hand, that same elaborateness invites years and years of disputes over interpretation that will only be accessible to organizations that can afford lawyers to argue them.

The latest definition of “online content-sharing service provider” that is supposed to either take licenses to copyrighted works or take steps to keep them off their networks is this mouthful:

“… online services that play an important role on the online content market by competing with other online content services, such as online audio and video streaming services, for the same audiences … the main or one of the main purposes of which is to store and enable users to upload and share a large amount of copyright-protected content with the purpose of obtaining profit therefrom, either directly or indirectly, by organising it and promoting it in order to attract a larger audience, including by categorising it and using targeted promotion within it.”

In other words, the law is — presumably — targeted only to major content-sharing services (YouTube) that compete with media companies’ owned or licensed services that don’t accept user-uploaded content (Netflix, Spotify). The list of types of services that are exempt from the law has changed a bit from the previous version of the bill: business-to-business cloud services (DropBox) are now exempt but “service providers the main purpose of which is to engage in or to facilitate copyright piracy” (Sci-Hub) are not. The enacted legislation maintains exemptions from previous drafts for the likes of Wikipedia, GitHub, iCloud, Google Drive, and non-profit scientific and educational content repositories.

At the same time, paragraph 4 of Article 17 — which contains the meat of the license, takedown, and filter provisions — contains language that will be worrying to startups and their potential investors. Despite the fact that other parts of Article 17 attempt to exempt small and niche-market services in general, Paragraph 6 calls for three tiers of responsibilities that depend on the age and size of the online service:

Services that are less than three years old and have annual revenues under €10 million (US $11.2 million) must make “best efforts” to take licenses to content or, if no license is available, respond to takedown notices.

Of those services, those with more than 5 million average monthly users must also “ma[k]e best efforts to prevent [] future uploads” of works that have been taken down pursuant to takedown notices — i.e., to implement what has been called “takedown and staydown.”

Services that are more than three years old or make more than €10 million also have to make “best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information[,]” i.e., to filter content proactively instead of just reactively after takedowns.

In other words, new and small services — as a practical matter, and provided that someone decides they meet the criteria for “online content-sharing service provider” shown above — will need to implement a notice-and-takedown regime similar to the U.S. DMCA — but also possibly be liable for not making “best efforts” to obtain licenses.

The lighter requirements are not difficult to administer, assuming that “best efforts” to obtain licenses is understood to mean working with the usual collecting societies and not tracking down arbitrary copyright owners for every piece of content uploaded. The problem is that the requirements expire in three years. In other words, when an entrepreneur or investor embarks on a new venture, the clock starts ticking until legal risks and expenses increase … maybe, depending on those definitions of applicable services above.

At least for the foreseeable future, this scheme will cast a pall not only over entrepreneurship but also over online services that serve niche communities. It also gives large copyright owners — and, indirectly, large service providers — perpetual leverage over the little guys, which is not good for competition. Contrast this with U.S. regulations for Internet radio (webcasting): while big commercial webcasters have to record stream data and pay royalties on a per-stream basis, small ones (as defined by revenue and/or non-profit status) can get away with simply paying nominal annual fees. (Advantages for small commercial webcasters have been whittled away over the years but they remain for the smallest educational non-profits.)

The second issue is the law’s requirements for copyright filtering. Under the new law, larger and older content services that choose not to take licenses to content will need to implement “takedown and staydown” (No. 2 on the list above) and then ultimately “ensure unavailability of works for which rightholders have provided information” (No. 3). In fact the final version of the legislation is more forthright about the filtering requirement than the previous version, despite its protestation (required under European law) that “[t]he application of [] Article [17] shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation.”

The difference between No. 2 and No. 3 is meaningful but not huge as a practical matter. The former requires service providers to keep lists of identifying information about content that has been the subject of takedown notices, while the latter requires them to use lists of identifying information about all content that rights holders don’t want uploaded in the first place. The latter implies the type of content recognition scheme that’s most widely used nowadays — such as Google’s Content ID or Audible Magic. A technology like those could be used for “takedown and staydown” by simply applying it only to items of content that someone has tried to upload instead of applying it to every item that rights holders submit to the vendor.

In other words, the now-official version of this bill lends credence to MEP Julia Reda’s statements that certain types of content-sharing services will have no choice but to implement filters — though the way I’d prefer to say it is that many of them will want to choose the filtering option as the less legally risky option. At the same time, there’s been a lot of talk about how expensive and elaborate filtering schemes will need to be in order to satisfy both rights holders and content service providers under this law; I never believed these doomsday predictions, and I still don’t.

My previous views, before the final round of text changes, were that it would take many years of high-powered lobbying and litigation to figure out what the filtering requirements actually are (given how vaguely they are worded), and that content services will shy away from overfiltering (false positives of content identification) because it will cost them audiences compared to competitors that don’t overfilter. While I still believe the latter, the latest changes to the law lead me to a different view on the former point.

There are two reasons why I suspect that content services will manage to avoid taking on expensive R&D-level projects that push the envelope of content recognition technology. First, paragraph 5 of Article 17 calls for the principle of “proportionality” — a fundamental concept in French law — to take into account the availability, cost, and complexity of technical measures as well as the online service’s type of content and audience. In the case of content identification technologies, it’s generally understood that advances in technology lead to diminishing returns in improved accuracy and effectiveness — particularly with regard to the fair use-like cases enumerated in paragraph 7 of Article 17, which are basically impossible to automate in filtering systems. In other words, fancy R&D initiatives to improve filtering are easily shown not to be “proportional.”

The second reason has to do with a little-noticed yet important new provision in the legislation that passed last week. Historically, deliberations between copyright owners and service providers about filtering technologies have have taken place in the dark, mostly hidden under private nondisclosure agreements or courts’ protective orders in lawsuits. U.S. courts have offered limited guidance through a few decisions about the adequacy of these technologies (or lack thereof), in cases such as Arista v. LimeWire, Universal Music Group v. Veoh, and Universal Music Group v. Escape Media (Grooveshark). The world at large knows little about how, and how well, these technologies work.

That secrecy and reticence could come to an end in Europe. Paragraph 10 of Article 17 sets up mandatory “stakeholder dialogues to discuss best practices for cooperation between online content-sharing service providers and rightholders … regarding the cooperation referred to in paragraph 4.” There are two important new wrinkles to this provision in the final version of the text. One is: “For the purpose of the stakeholder dialogues, users’ organisations shall have access to adequate information from online content-sharing service providers on the functioning of their practices with regard to paragraph 4.” The other is: “The [European] Commission shall, … taking into account the results of the stakeholder dialogues, issue guidance … regarding the cooperation referred to in paragraph 4.”

This means that online services that choose to filter rather than license will need to disclose what filtering schemes they are using. Service providers may try to use ambiguous and opaque language to meet this vaguely worded requirement in hopes that no one sues them. But everyone would be much better off in the long run if the European Commission could define standards for this information (akin to labeling standards that have been suggested in the U.S. for DRM) so that everyone understands who is using which technologies. When the European Commission issues its “guidance,” which presumably will be precedential on service providers, everyone will be better informed.

If this happens, the dialogues and guidance will not necessarily lead to more stringent filtering schemes — in fact, I’d say probably not. First, they could give users information to help them choose services with the most reasonable filtering schemes, which in turn will encourage more reasonable filtering, since the services with stricter or coarser filtering schemes will die off.

In addition, it’s important to remember that regulations or government-issued “guidance” never establish lower bounds that stakeholders are motivated to exceed; on the contrary, they establish basic standards that stakeholders have to barely meet. It’s safe to assume that the tech industry will argue vehemently in stakeholder dialogues against filtering requirements that cost them lots of money. Therefore if any innovation comes out of the process, it’s more likely to be in the form of more cost-efficient ways of doing the bare minimum.

It’s possible that these forces will balance each other out and minimize the burden on service providers that this law imposes while maximizing services’ utility for users. There’s no doubt that this law will burden online services and users alike; but at least as far as the stakeholder dialogues are concerned, it’s possible that balance and (yes) proportionality could prevail. And let’s not forget that it could also actually achieve its core objective and put more money in creators’ pockets.

Of course, all this depends on a process of clarifying the highly complex and vague language in the Directive and implementing it in the laws of all EU Member States. This process will take many years — at which time it remains to be seen if it’s even relevant anymore.

[acsversace-news]

The 2018 Primetime Emmy Award nominations will be announced Thursday, and it would be a pretty shocking twist if The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story didn’t receive recognition in the Outstanding Limited Series categories.

This is partially due to the FX drama’s particular political resonance. It covers issues like homophobia and the Clinton-era “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy while members of today’s LGBTQ community feel increasingly threatened by the mood of the country. As a result, Versace has spawned countless essays, including one from Paste, at the beginning of the season’s run and another at the end. And, of course, Versace’s likely Emmy nominations haul should also be credited to uber-producer Ryan Murphy, who co-created the American Crime Story concept—which nabbed nine Emmys wins for its equally timely first season, The People v. O.J. Simpson—as well as Feud: Bette and Joan (two wins; 16 nominations) and the pioneering American Horror Story (16 wins; 78 nominations since its 2011 premiere).

Murphy, who once recounted to Vulture his own childhood memories of creating viewing parties dedicated to the ABC miniseries Roots and The Winds of War, is the face of the new anthology series format. He and his collaborators have an established company of players who happily reincarnate themselves year after year as he places them into one or another of his franchises. And though no one will argue with the effectiveness of Murphy and his collaborators’ visions, or their importance in this moment of pop culture history, many will nitpick over whether his masterworks are, in fact, “limited series.”

Today, however, I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

Are these season-long stories actually anthologies? Or is an anthology something simpler? Is a better definition of “anthology” something like Netflix’s Black Mirror? Creator Charlie Brooker’s limited series breaks things down even further than American Crime Story: Each episode tells a self-contained story, each beholden to the series’ central theme (in this case, that we all should be cautious of the wonders of technology).

Greg Garcia would argue for the latter definition, though he’s fully aware of his own interest in this fight. The creator of dark comedies like NBC’s My Name is Earl and Fox’s Raising Hope, Garcia debuted his TBS comedy, The Guest Book, last year. Although it does have recurring characters (Garret Dillahunt plays a divorcing doctor, Eddie Steeples a delivery guy), the series is really a bunch of stand-alone half-hour vignettes about folks who end up staying at a small-town guest lodge. They have, well, interesting interactions with the locals and choose to document them in the titular journal. It’s a great way to celebrate the comic stylings of actors like Danny Pudi and Lauren Lapkus without tying them up for a season-plus commitment. It also allows Garcia himself to create stories that don’t have to be serialized.

“That’s just a limited-run series,” Garcia says of TV shows like American Horror Story and FX’s other popular miniseries, creator Noah Hawley’s Fargo. He says programs like Jay and Mark Duplass’ Room 104 (HBO) or Black Mirror “are, in my book, anthologies,” because they’re comprised of self-contained stories within each episode.

“The others are just short seasons,” Garcia says.

Ever the comedy writer, he adds that by the other definition, “I’ve done a lot of anthology shows that got cancelled after the first season.” (RIP Built to Last, an example of what happens when your show’s name taunts fate.)

And he’s right, historically speaking. Walter Podrazik, television curator at Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications and the co-author of Watching TV: Eight Decades of American Television, says that TV drama anthologies started in the 1940s and 1950s as way of “testing the waters” of the medium’s capabilities. This progressed to shows with famous names attached to them, like Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which featured “unrelated stories” each night “that either thematically or attitudinally would have something in common.”

“You’d probably be surprised to see a sweetness and light story on Alfred Hitchcock that had no twist at the end,” Podrazik adds.

Eventually, though, he says that definition broadened.

“Let’s use Star Trek as an example,” Podrazik says. “What you’re coming for is Kirk and Spock, but it’s sort of an anthology in a disguise… Each week, you’ll see characters that you’re probably never going to see again except maybe once more. In that sense, it reflected what [creator] Gene Roddenberry said about it [being] a Western in space, because Westerns, especially those that involved traveling and wagon trains, were basically also anthologies in disguise but with regular characters.”

In that vein, Podrazik says, series like Fox’s The X-Files or those in Dick Wolf’s procedural crime universes for NBC also fit this hybrid description of “anthology” series.

“You have these reassuringly familiar tropes and you have these [recurring] characters who are delivering their roles, but the story really is about … characters who come in [this episode],” Podrazik argues of the latter. “That’s why there’s such a satisfaction about seeing an episode of Law & Order is that it’s done.”

Murphy himself seems to also recognize this. He told The New Yorker earlier this year that he’d like to do another anthology series. This one would be an empowering, #MeToo-themed series called Consent, and it would feature the social commentary for which he’s become known — and would have one key format change:

“It would follow a Black Mirror model: every episode would explore a different story, starting with an insidery account of the Weinstein Company,” New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum writes of Murphy’s proposal. “There would be an episode about Kevin Spacey, one about an ambiguous he-said-she-said encounter. Each episode could have a different creator.”

So while we wait to hear if this new idea moves forward—and how the Emmy nominations will shake out for The Assassination of Gianni Versace, there’s one thing that everyone covering limited series and anthologies could benefit from: a thesaurus.

[maxwellyjordan]

Argument analysis: Justices at odds over federal robocall ban in the face of technological change

Bryan Garner argues over telephone for Noah Duguid (Art Lien)

On Tuesday, for the second time this year, the Supreme Court heard oral argument on the federal law that bans robocalls to cellphones. The question this time, in Facebook v. Duguid, is whether the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s ban on robocalling or robotexting cellphones using an “automatic telephone dialing system” includes using a device that can store and automatically dial telephone numbers without using a “random or sequential number generator.”

At argument, the justices principally appeared frustrated by the statute, if for different reasons. Several justices suggested that the TCPA is out of step with current technology. They seemed to diverge, however, on how that should cut in interpreting the statute, or whether changes in technology or the consequences of their ruling should play a role in their consideration at all.

None of the justices seemed to relish picking between the two interpretations ostensibly before them: one that might create an avalanche of targeted robocalls, or another that might render ordinary smartphone usage a violation of the TCPA. The justices all appeared to agree on one thing, however: They wished the ball was in Congress’ court (or maybe the Federal Communications Commission’s), instead of theirs.

On the upside for court watchers, the argument involved colorful hypotheticals, and we gained some insight into both how the justices use technology — Justice Sonia Sotomayor sends email blasts, and Justice Clarence Thomas remembers when cellphones were the size of a loaf of bread! — and how they think about the intersection of technological change and statutory meaning.

Enacted in 1991, the TCPA regulates a range of telemarketing practices. The part of the statute at issue in Duguid bans “using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice” — both of which the Federal Communications Commission considers “robocalls” — to call or text cellphones without consent. The TCPA defines an automatic telephone dialing system, or ATDS, as “equipment which has the capacity — (A) to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and (B) to dial such numbers.”

Former Solicitor General Paul Clement represented Facebook. Argument was divided with the federal government, which filed in support of the company.

Clement’s opening statement, like the social media company’s briefs, centered on grammar. He argued that usual rules of grammar and statutory construction require the phrase “using a random or sequential number generator” to apply to both verbs, “store” and “produce.” Congress in the TCPA prohibited using prerecorded voices to call both cellphones and residential numbers, he noted, but only banned using an ATDS to call cellphones, hospitals and other lines that were particularly vulnerable to abuse by random and sequential number generators. “[I]f Congress were really aiming at annoying calls from devices that could store and dial numbers,” Clement emphasized, “its failure to protect the home front would be inexplicable.”

Chief Justice John Roberts opened with a line of questioning that would be a central theme of the argument: Noah Duguid, who sued Facebook out of frustration from repeated automated texts he received to his cellphone from the social network, argues that “we ought to look to the sense of the passage and not to rules of syntax. … As a general matter, he’s right, isn’t he? I mean, the drafters here weren’t following the rule of reddendo singula singulis or diagramming these sentences.” Why should we focus on syntax? Clement’s response: “Because the other way lies madness.” Congress targeted a specific problem in 1991, he maintained, and the court should not “repurpose the statutory prohibition to address more modern ills.”

Justice Samuel Alito pressed a similar line. People don’t look at grammar treatises, he said; they ask what makes sense. This leads to a key question: “Does it make any sense to speak about storing a list of telephone numbers using a random or sequential number generator?” If not, Alito stated, “I think you have a problem.” Justice Elena Kagan pressed a similar question. Consider a law that says, “It is illegal to stab or shoot another person using a firearm.” “What I want to know is,” asked Kagan, “would I be covered if I stabbed somebody with a knife?”

In response, Clement pressed the idea, to which he returned throughout the argument, that it’s not that the number generator has to literally do the storing (or for that matter, the dialing), but instead that “you’re using the number generator … as part of the process of storing telephone numbers to be called or part of the process of dialing telephone numbers to be called.” Congress, he said, was trying to prohibit the use of number generators for either immediate dialing, captured by the word “produce,” or later dialing, captured by the word “store.” That, he said, makes storing with a generator different than stabbing someone with a firearm (other than a bayonet).

The chief opened a second general theme about practical consequences. Duguid argues that if his interpretation is rejected, a torrent of targeted robocalls to cellphones will be unleashed. Is that something, Roberts inquired, that the court should consider at all? Clement responded that it is Congress’ job to address problems in an ongoing way. He also pressed his own parade of horribles: Under Duguid’s interpretation, every smartphone would qualify as an ATDS and every smartphone user might be subject to TCPA liability. But, Sotomayor wondered, perhaps that problem stems less from Duguid’s interpretation than from the TCPA, which also regulates calls to pagers. If Congress targeted all automatic calls, and now every smartphone can make them, Sotomayor asked, isn’t it Congress’ job “to update the TCPA to bring it in line with the times”?

Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch each asked about alternate ways to interpret the statute beyond the two options presented by the parties. Thomas asked why text messages should be considered “calls” at all. Clement welcomed the possibility that the justices would give Facebook a win by cabining the statute to voice calls. Referencing an opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett from her time on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, Gorsuch wondered whether “using a random or sequential number generator” might modify “numbers called” instead of the verbs, despite the comma between them. Would there be a practical difference between adopting that interpretation and the one Facebook advances? Clement did not think there would be, but offered that “calling” and “storing” numbers using a random or sequential number generator ought to be viewed as equally sensible interpretations.

The federal government was represented by Jonathan Ellis from the solicitor general’s office. Ellis took largely the same position as Facebook and was met by similar questions. Ellis attacked Duguid’s interpretation as “anti-grammatical” and attempted to forestall concerns about opening the floodgates to robocalls by emphasizing that “regardless of how the Court resolves this case, the TCPA will continue to broadly prohibit robocalls to cellphones and residential lines.”

Ellis first tussled with Roberts over whether the case “begins and ends with the text” and how much room the FCC might have to interpret the statute contrary to the government’s interpretation. Barrett followed up on that question, asking whether courts’ usual deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes would even apply to the FCC’s reading of the law. (The FCC is currently considering how to construe the very same language and has previously read the statute as Duguid argues it should be.) Ellis was noncommittal, saying only that the statute doesn’t give the FCC much room to adopt a different interpretation.

Alito again inquired if the government must show that there was technology in 1991 that could store numbers using a generator. Ellis responded no, and added that it is not a requirement that both verbs, “store” and “produce,” do independent work; Congress might have been using a belt-and-suspenders approach.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned Ellis, as he had Clement, on why Congress would have treated prerecorded calls differently from live calls placed with an ATDS. What was the real-world problem Congress was getting at? Congress was concerned, Ellis said, that live ATDS calls could cause problems to the sort of sensitive lines in the provision, such as 911 lines and cellphones whose owner would be charged for the call.

Bryan Garner, a textualist scholar who published a book on statutory and constitutional interpretation with the late Justice Antonin Scalia, represented Duguid. It was his first Supreme Court argument.

“Any method of interpretation — textualism, purposivism, consequentialism — favors affirmance here,” he began. But as a matter of text, he said, the question is ordinary meaning. “No linguistic rule should lead us to conclude” that “to maintain or acquire lands to be developed using eminent domain” means “we must maintain lands using eminent domain.” The same principles apply here. On Facebook’s reading, he argued, both “store” and “or” are surplusage. Garner also offered his own parade of horribles: “Facebook would read the statute into oblivion because robocallers today use stored phone numbers to annoy people just as they often did in 1991.” “Like a viper,” this interpretation would “kill[] the statute and privacy.”

Garner had a somewhat academic colloquy with the justices, with more than one asking for his expert or personal view. The chief began by asking, if ordinary speakers – not canons of interpretation – should be the basis of statutory interpretation, why don’t we just poll 100 ordinary people? Garner answered that a poll might be useful, but that native speakers understand without canons. For example, “cookbooks are full of statements” such as “using a spatula, lift the omelet and tilt the pan.” Nobody stops to say, “do I have to use the spatula to lift the pan?”

Thomas observed, as he had with Ellis, that technology has changed immensely from 1991, when cellphones were the size of a loaf of bread and caller-ID was cutting edge. “Don’t you think it’s rather odd” or even futile to apply a statute that’s “almost anachronistic” to the current moment? he asked. “The average American is very well familiar with robocalls,” Garner responded, and “actually doesn’t care whether they were randomly generated” or not. Thomas then suggested that, in the old days, numbers were randomly generated because that’s all the technology could do. Garner responded that in 1991, “there were lots of stored numbers,” and in fact “lists and databases of known numbers came up over 200 times, [while] generators came up only four times, in the whole legislative history.”

Justice Stephen Breyer noted that normally a dynamic interpretation is used to expand the statute – for instance, in an environmental statute, to protect a certain species of fox as endangered when it wasn’t thought to be when the statute was written. But here, he said, it looks as if dynamic interpretation would constrict the statute. Garner responded, “I’m a proponent of the fixed-meaning canon, but … given what has happened in the last 29 years, Congress looks prescient having said ‘store’ and ‘or’ before ‘produce.’”

Alito asked whether call forwarding, available in 1991, qualified as an ATDS. Garner said no, and neither would normal uses of cellphones today — because both involve human intervention, not automatic dialing. He pointed out that the FCC and two federal appeals courts have found that human intervention excludes calls from the definition of ATDS, and that direct human placement of a call rather than automatic dialing differentiates human intervention from ATDS.

Sotomayor returned to the question of consequences. If the court rules for Duguid, she asked, “the logical consequence is that every cellphone owner would be subject to the harsh” penalties of the TCPA. She asked for a reason Congress would have intended that. Garner’s response was that ordinary Americans don’t use smartphones for “automated mass dialing or blitz messaging.” But “I do e-mail blasts with friends,” Sotomayor noted, and there is all sort of automated technology available from Zoom to FaceTime. Won’t the court’s ruling affect the development of technology? The court could disclaim application to smartphones, Garner offered, but in most cases, as with friends, there is also consent.

Kagan asked Garner if he would concede that the statute was “ungrammatical,” which he refused to do. “It’s an unusual sentence … perhaps a little awkward,” he said. It “shows the infinite variety of the kind of sentences that English speakers can devise.”

Gorsuch pressed Garner on where the idea of automaticity can be found in the statute, and suggested that Garner was “putting a lot of words” into the statute. “I don’t think so,” Garner responded. “I’m looking at the definition itself. The term ‘ATDS’ means equipment that has the capacity to dial such numbers. It’s the equipment that dials. And the word ‘automatic’ is the word being defined.”

Barrett followed up about the need for human intervention. What about an autoreply function? I can set my iPhone, Barrett noted, to send a do not disturb message if I am driving or sleeping, and set it up to send to all of my contacts. “Would that be enough, one step removed,” to “count as human intervention?” Garner answered no, trying to blunt his response with the point that there would likely be consent. Barrett followed up, inquiring about synesis — the concept of focusing on what would make sense to an ordinary speaker, on which Duguid relies. Is that a legal concept? Barrett asked. Is it one that Garner, presumably as a textualist, would endorse? Garner’s response: “I don’t endorse it broadly. And yet it does recognize that we must look at the sense of the words to understand the sentence.”

Garner closed, noting that “on Facebook’s reading, it would have been possible even in 1991 to download the entire phone book and auto dial every number with impunity, thousands per minute, as long as you stored the numbers on a floppy disk or hard drive,” rather than a number generator.

In his rebuttal, Clement noted that the awkwardness of reading “store” with “generator” would matter if one of two things were true: either if it were impossible to read them together, or if doing so would render words in the statute superfluous. But it’s not impossible, he asserted, and Duguid’s reading has a bigger superfluity issue because it reads the generator clause out of the statute. The notion of human intervention that Duguid advances, Clement countered, is not in the statute and doesn’t solve the problem in any event: “If I tell Siri to dial a number from one of my stored contacts, that’s about as automatic as dialing gets.”

The court is expected to issue its opinion by the end of June. Regardless of outcome, the ruling is likely to have significant implications for the future of marketing and cellphone spam, and perhaps for broader questions of statutory interpretation in the face of technological change.

The post Argument analysis: Justices at odds over federal robocall ban in the face of technological change appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/12/argument-analysis-justices-at-odds-over-federal-robocall-ban-in-the-face-of-technological-change/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[gettingagriponthings]

The A.I. Panopticon: The Power of Mind Over Mind

In 1787 a British thinker by the name of Jeremy Bentham published a series of 21 letters in response to an advertisement he’d seen in the paper. The ad was regarding a House of Correction. Parliament was preparing to deport thousands of prisoners to Australia (they had been sending convicts to the colonies across the Atlantic, but that system ended with the American revolution) and was looking for some new prison designs. Bentham went to great length detailing a structure he thought might fit the bill and allow a large number of subjects to be overseen by a minimum number of monitors. He called this design the panopticon or Inspection House. PAN-OPTI-CON, From the Greek: pan (all) opti (seeing). Bentham described it as such:

The building is circular.

The apartments of the prisoners occupy the circumference. You may call them, if you please, the cells.

These cells are divided from one another, and the prisoners by that means secluded from all communication with each other, by partitions in the form of radii issuing from the circumference towards the centre, and extending as many feet as shall be thought necessary to form the largest dimension of the cell.

The apartment of the inspector occupies the centre; you may call it if you please the inspector's lodge.

It will be convenient in most, if not in all cases, to have a vacant space or area all round, between such centre and such circumference. You may call it if you please the intermediate or annular area.

Bentham’s design called for a round building with a single tower in the middle. The tower was surrounded by some large number of cells arranged in a circle, all exposed to the central tower. Subjects would be kept in separate cells, and monitored by a solitary guard in the middle. I used the term “subjects” because Bentham emphasized in his letters how versatile the panopticon could be:

No matter how different, or even opposite the purpose: whether it be that of punishing the incorrigible, guarding the insane, reforming the vicious, confining the suspected, employing the idle, maintaining the helpless, curing the sick, instructing the willing in any branch of industry, or training the rising race in the path of education: in a word, whether it be applied to the purposes of perpetual prisons in the room of death, or prisons for confinement before trial, or penitentiary-houses, or houses of correction, or work-houses, or manufactories, or mad-houses, or hospitals, or schools.

Bentham’s panopticon was designed for the masses, especially for the subjugation of the vulnerable and already oppressed.

With only “a simple idea in Architecture!” Bentham effectively designed a way for the powerful to reform the morals, preserve health, and invigorate industry, among the powerless. And only one monitor would be needed for “obtaining power of mind over mind.” 

Morals reformed - health preserved - industry invigorated instruction diffused - public burthens lightened - Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock - the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws are not cut, but untied - all by a simple idea in Architecture!

[...]

A new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example

The panopticon is a diabolically genius idea. Though its simplicity and bluntness hit you over the head like a brick and leave you with a bad hangover. One person can effectively control hundreds, not by monitoring all subjects at every moment, but by convincing them that they could be monitored at any given moment. You never know when the monitor is watching so you behave as though he is always watching. 

Visible and Unverifiable

Nearly two centuries later, in his 1975 book Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, French philosopher Michel Foucault revisited Bentham’s panopticon. 

Foucault teased out some of the finer points and clarified the ramifications of the architectural structure that could go beyond the physical manifestation of a prison.

"Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. [...]

To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.

A Clearer View of Everything

2020 has brought about a new age of the panopticon. This one is without walls and is even more “all-seeing” than Bentham’s version.

The New York Times recently released a piece entitled The Secret Company That Might End Privacy As We Know It, detailing a new artificial intelligence company called Clearview AI that’s developed a powerful facial recognition product. Clearview’s facial recognition application is unparalleled in its reach and capacity to recognize the faces of countless people on the street that might be unfortunate enough to cross the path of a device employing it. But Clearview isn’t a best-in-class product because of what the founder Hoan Ton-That says is a “state-of-the-art neural net,” or because of more sophisticated thermal imaging, or because of the implementation of any other particular technological innovation. In fact, Albert Wenger of the venture capital firm a16z wrote on his blog:

“First, it should be clear by now that it has become almost trivial to build a system like this. A lot of open source frameworks and neural networks have been made available that can be trained for face recognition. Clearview AI did not have to come up with some technological breakthrough, they just had to point existing technology at image sources[...].”

Clearview AI is in a class all its own because of their massive database of images to pull from when evaluating a person spotted in the real world. They tout a database of over 3 billion images, each scraped from sites on the open web like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Venmo, and YouTube. 

Automated web scraping technology has existed nearly as long as the internet itself. The first internet crawling bot, the World Wide Web Crawler, debuted in the summer of 1993, with the first crawler powered search engine coming that winter. 

The usage of web scraping technology is not difficult (Try it for yourself here, here, or here), but the usage of it for the collection of massive amounts of personal information for surveillance is ethically ambiguous at best, and is in direct contradiction to the terms and policies of many popular websites. Twitter’s Developer Agreement and Policy document for example says:

User Protection. Twitter Content, and information derived from Twitter Content, may not be used by, or knowingly displayed, distributed, or otherwise made available to:

1. any public sector entity (or any entities providing services to such entities) for surveillance purposes, including but not limited to:

investigating or tracking Twitter's users or their Twitter Content; and, 

tracking, alerting, or other monitoring of sensitive events (including but not limited to protests, rallies, or community organizing meetings);

2. any public sector entity (or any entities providing services to such entities) whose primary function or mission includes conducting surveillance or gathering intelligence;

Twitter has already sent a cease and desist letter to the company regarding its violation of its terms. I hope other platforms aren’t too far behind.

More important than Clearview’s violation of the wishes of giant tech platforms is their violation of the trust and privacy of millions of Americans. In over three billion instances Clearview has surreptitiously taken the images of unwitting social media and content site users (if you’re reading this, they almost certainly have photos of you) and given them to others to surveil them.

There are now over 600 different law enforcement entities in the United States that have licensed Clearview’s facial recognition product. Everyone from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to hundreds of state and local agencies is using Clearview’s tech. It’s had such rapid adoption because it’s simply more powerful than everything else they have. A more common facial recognition tool used by law enforcement might have similar identification technology but certainly has a dramatically smaller database to match from. It might have a database of a few million images: a combination of police collected images from criminal investigations, mugshots, and maybe a state DMV database. It would be limited in size (still massive but not 3 billion images massive) and limited in identification range and flexibility. These government collected photos are often taken straight-on from the front, or directly from the side, and usually feature an individual with a relatively blank expression. Clearview’s ripped photos show people from every imaginable angle and would feature a wide range of expressions; from happy to sad, and everything in between. 

Invisible and Verifiable

Clearview’s facial recognition weapon is the panopticon made real and inverted.

Foucault described Bentham’s panopticon as laying down the idea that power, like the monitor within the central tower, should be ‘visible but unverifiable.’ 

In conjunction with the unregulated ability of companies and governments to track our movements, purchases, thoughts, and desires, Clearview’s product (and the ubiquity of facial recognition policing) represents a new paradigm. 

Power will be increasingly invisible but verifiable.

There is no central tower to see and to fear. It’s been digitized, decentralized, and democratized. 

And there isn’t a question of whether or not the inspector is paying attention. You are being watched. You are being monitored. You are not anonymous. 

Only understanding the issue and having the courage to stand up and speak, even while under the gaze of the panopticon’s eye, will hold power accountable. 

*(h/t to @benedictevans whose subheading “Building the panopticon” in last week’s newsletter lead to my research into the ideas of Bentham/Foucault. Read his essays HERE and subscribe to his awesome newsletter)

[matrixbearer]

Thank you for the bayverse!Optimus meta. It was very enlightening, and also put into words aspects of him that I had thought of but not really... formulated I guess. The reason why AoE is my fav TF movie is precisely because of the persecution of the Autobots, the injustice that nobody really gets punished for. You mentioned also the sparklings. I attributed their "evilness" to Megatron being their father, but you're right, they come from the Allspark. Part 1/2

Part 2/2: So does this mean that in order for a transformer to turn into a mech like say Optimus or Bumblebee or Ratchet they would have to be educated accordingly? or is it maybe that the Allspark was corrupted? But back to AoE, what I appreciated so much was the realism. Like, you cannot convince me that we wouldn’t use alien robots (who have proven to have a soul) to advance our own technology. The movie might have been too long (that was imo not the flaw) but in that sense it was realistic.

♞ ┊ ( ooc. )

I am glad you found some enlightenment in my response to your question about comparing Tyran Optimus to other iterations. (reference.)

CONT.

Oh, I have no doubt that humans would use an alien species for their technology, that we would argue ourselves into moral ambiguity for our benefit; we do it for our own kind, I cannot see is proving to better than to an interstellar alien. Having faith in humanity does not mean ignoring our worst qualities; it is about watching for those qualities and trying to put a stop to them. We all know, at our heart of hearts, that if we wanted to be the great species we aspired to we could be. The only price to pay would we could no longer look to another group and see them as Othered in the sense that they don’t deserve the same care we give ourselves. We tell ourselves that to take care of someone of another group would will cost us anything in a burdened sacrifice. We don’t look to someone else and provide for them the same way we do ourselves.

That is animal instinct, that is survival of the self and the tribe. It is only when we get into the tribal instinct to provide our own tribe that selflessness begins to take a backseat. The reason why we’re not cannibals and why we condemn murder is because we taught ourselves as a species that to harm one of our tribe was to harm our tribe, because it diminishes the population of the tribe. Until humans can look at ANY other human as a member of their tribe, we will continue to be the human species we see in AOE && TLK; we will be the humans that turns refugee children away because they aren’t seen as children of our tribe. Optimus Prime puts emphasis on the right of freedom belonging to all sentient beings; there is no other, there is no crossroads of division, it is simply for all. We don’t see that. We haven’t come to see that, yet.

So yes, we would treat an alien species as another resource for us to strip clean and pick apart for our sole benefit.

The AllSpark is not corrupted, at least we have NO indication that it is. It is simply the powersource of the unique radiation required to bring Cybertronian metal to life. The rest attributed to it is metaphysical. While we could argue that the AllSpark must be alive because it sources life, I do not feel at all that it is inherently evil or corrupted. Why? Because it goes back to the argument of what is evil. The Nokia phone in the box (TF1) was not evil; we could say it was merely defending itself. If you refer to my previous answer (here), I iterated how Cybertronians are much tougher than humans are. They are naturally more violent than we are because they can survive much more. But to call them inherently evil because they have a higher tolerance of violence is projecting our limitations onto them and turning into a diagnosis.

Cybertronians are more evil than we are—but that is their nature. That is no different than them transforming into another form. It is who they are, built into their CNA. They are not inherently evil, no more than how humanity is inherently evil. With sentience comes freedom, free will, and the right to choose WHO and WHAT we are. They, just as we, become evil in how they behave. Autobots are also violent, but they fight to protect and to defend. Decepticons are evil because they fight to destroy worlds, to hoard resources, and the power to decide who does and doesn’t deserve those resources. That is what we do when we assess someone and decide if they are worthy of partaking in the resources we’ve claimed as ours. Evil comes out when a member of one tribe decides that the member of another tribe is somehow less than and subsequently less worthy of receiving life giving resources. That is when evil comes out.

The Civil War started because of a famine (re: Tyran books). They were in a race to find the AllSpark and they were fighting over who gets to decide who receives their resources. Megatron was evil because he wanted to only give to the strongest, to those like himself. Optimus wanted to give it anyone, no matter what it meant they were because all Cybertronians had the the same rights as he did. That is why the Decepticons are constantly saying they just want to go home, they just want fuel, they just want to rebuild their world—okay, that sounds noble, but they also wanted to deny those very things to others they feel are unworthy. They wanted to rebuild Cybertron in their image, and this was the same fundamental goal the Decepticons had in the end of Transformers Prime and why Optimus chose to destroy the Omega Lock. That fundamental differences in morals is why Tyran Optimus opted to have the AllSpark destroyed and Cybertron critical damaged by way of aborted transportation to our solar system.

What was the deciding factor to turn bots like Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, or any of the Autobots away from the extreme violence inherent to their nature? The same factor that decides such with us; free will. We are also a violent species, and there is no need to give explains of our atrocities as a species when we can all think of at least three. But it also refers back to the definition of evil being in the choices we make, and now in how we are born. The idea that someone is inherently evil (born that way) is an ancient one, not so much challenged until recently as we learned more about mental health and also looked beyond our immediate tribe.

This is the whole ❛ nature vs nurture ❜ argument. Transformers Tyran clearly lines out that evil within their species is nurture, not nature, and that humans are the same. The Autobots choose to not be as the Decepticons. Optimus Prime was one of the leaders that ended the tribal wars that carved up Cybertron; they were a lot like the tribes of the British Isles.

Are some people inherently less prone to violence than others? Yes, absolutely, and we can see that in our own kind. Optimus Prime was one of those less prone to violence; he had an eloquence to explain his reason away from violence that made sense to others. Ironhide was one of the first to step away from the tribal wars and follow Optimus towards the unification of Cybertron and its many tribes.

One of the many points of the background apocrypha in Tyran that is missing from the movies is the dyadic reign of Megatron and Optimus. They were High Lord Protector and Prime; one led the military and Cybertronian might, while the other was leader of the civilian side of things. They were equals and balanced each other as two sides of a coin. They were also sparktwins; they came from the same spark but were separated, and were reunited when the tribes were united. Megatron was meant to be the more violent side to balance Optimus’ pacifistic side. Megatron’s job was to protect Cybertron, to enforce its laws and guard its safety. Why? So that Optimus could focus less on the will to survive and more on the will to grow as a civilization beyond the most basic of needs. Without Megatron, Optimus has suffered, being pushed further and further to the edge of their primal instincts, often times to fight the mech that was supposed to protect him and let him just worry about leading their people. It could be assessed that as time passed on without Megatron, Optimus’ more violent instincts were brought out more with time.

There is a lot more realism in the last two movies. To me it shows Michael Bay and the other creative minds behind the continuity have grown and matured as well. If we look at the difference between say TF2 & TF4 there is a lot less of the childish humor. Less sexualization, less crude humor, less easy fixes, and the characters age as well. We no longer have a teenage hero of the story, but a father of a grown daughter. I think it is because they realize their target audience is actually older than they original were aiming towards, and that is why the realism becomes all the stronger and all the darker. This new Tyran Trilogy they are making is my favorite so far. I love the background and the setup of the previous three, but this new story arch is just so refreshing and exciting. 

IDK, I don’t agree with any of the criticism I’ve consistently read about AOE or even TLK. They are long, but I like long movies. I’m not typically a movie person but a TV series person because I like lengthy; I also don’t like reading book series with less than three involved.

At the end of the day, the Tyran continuity is not going to be for everyone. It is for me because I love the emphasis on how alien they are, the inclusion of advanced technology and magic, and a brutality to balance out the previous continuities kept tame for younger audiences. AOE&TLK are my favorite from the continuity now because of all the reasons I’ve discussed.

That and the music is also amazing, just as with any of the Tyran movies!

Hope to hear from you again, BayverseAnon! I love discussing this continuity as I feel it is under-discussed with less negativity.

And if anyone wants to send worldbuilding anons to my Tyran Optimus, please do so! I love worldbuilding with any of you.

[fence-sitter]

Existential asks

Camus : Do you smoke a lot? nope

Sisyphus : Do you feel like what you are doing has a purpose? I would like it to have a meaningful purpose one day. I applied for this uni course so I could learn Biology but I don’t get to pick my major till the second semester. So yeah, at the moment it feels purposeless but I know that I’ll be doing what I want to do soon enough. I just really hope studying Biology is not like this first semester because all it’s done is made me sad and anxious and stressed and thats not me, thats never been me, I hate it.

the Stranger : Are you more of an objective or subjective person? I’m definitely more of a subjective person

Caligula : Is freedom your thing? It absolutely is. I’m constantly searching for freedom away from routine, I hate routine, I love doing my own thing and knowing I have time to do my own thing. Uni has somewhat taken that away from me but I’m still adapting.

Sartre : With whom would you like to spend your life with? Wizard Howl. I mean first of all how great would life be, like, have you seen the movie just uggh mesmerized and plus hes the man of my dreams: a mysterious wizard with gorgeous hair, a bad reputation but he secretly has a soft center AHHH

Nausea : Does life feel repetitive at times? I don’t mind repetitiveness so long as it’s of something I enjoy. 

Antoine Roquentin : How bored are you? Everything can get boring at times, but right now I’m watching The Shawshank Redemption  

Being and Nothing : Are you a responsible person? I think I’m responsible 

No Exit : Do you like other people? I like most people I just don’t like when they talk to me. But then there are really special people that talk to me and I’m like oh you’re cool.

Simone de Beauvoir : Do you feel like you’re leading a life according to your conscience? I study Biology soooo if that doesn’t say enough. Also I’m not one of those people who follow ridiculous social standards. 

Ethics of Ambiguity : Can you be sure about your morals? I don’t think you can be sure about anyone’s morals, I mean, who’s to say their morals are better than someone elses. Who’s to say whats right or wrong.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky : Ever had a near miss with something extremely dangerous? Yes, my parents were taking the asbestos off the back of the house and I went down to where they were working (they were wearing masks obviously).

Notes From the Underground : Do you sometimes fly into schadenfreude and back? Not since highschool

The Brothers Karamazov : Do you set your own rules? Not really I’m not that bold. If you can’t find fun within the rules then maybe you’re just not creative enough.

Crime and Punishment : Will you try to justify yourself, even if what you did was evil? I try to justify myself to myself not really to anyone else. I’ll lay awake in bed and recite explanations for myself. 

Raskolnikov : Are you more of a law-abider or a vigilante? Law-abider 

Martin Heidegger : How are you with technology? I’m actually not that bad.

Being and Time : Favorite pastime? My favourite pass time is probably doing nothing while drinking tea. I just really enjoy sitting in the sun for ages. I like doing really slow, quiet things like sketching and stitching and hanging out washing.

Søren Kierkegaard : Are you religious? No i’m not but I do appreciate religion.

Johannes de Silentio : How far would you go for a person you love? I honestly don’t know, I don’t even know what love is yet, I suppose I’ll know when I do

Friedrich Nietzsche : Do you stand out from the crowd? No siree

Thus Spoke Zarathustra : Do people listen to you? I try to sound interesting when I talk but maybe I’m only interesting to myself.

Human, All Too Human : Ever dissociate from your surroundings? I often dissociate from places I don’t particularly want to be but on the contrary 

Schopenhauer as an Educator : Who was your fave teacher? My Biology teacher was by far my favourite because he was so admirable in the sense that he was like a shy quirky 7 year old boy in a mans body and that he was proud of the smallest things and was giddy about biology jokes and otters and pictures of babys, including his own. 

Arthur Schopenhauer : Are you obsessed with aesthetics and beauty? I am, its very addictive. I’m currently in love with pale skin, rosey lips and cheeks and long lashes what a look and the FRECKLES oh boy I love it

The World as Will and Representation : How do you deal with your suffering? somewhere in the back of my mind, somewhere I can’t get to, truth is I don’t really deal with my suffering someone give me some pointers please 

[hub-pub-bub]

EU Article 13 (Now Article 17) Passes After More Changes, Making Copyright Filtering More Likely]

The European Union’s copyright directive finally passed last week, with 56% of the European Parliament vote, after several rounds of significant changes to the text. On its way to final passage, the controversial Article 13 — now Article 17 — went through yet another round of changes that are worth discussing here. Two issues in particular stand out: how the law will affect startups and niche-market content services, and the nature of copyright filtering requirements.

The first issue is about how this law will affect startups and online communities that serve niche audiences by imposing legal risks and costs of licenses or filtering technology. The final text attempts to be more specific about the types of online services that are exempt from Article 17. But it ends up both ambiguous and needlessly burdensome on startups.

On the one hand, the text now includes elaborate definitions of online services to which the law is supposed to apply that are intended to protect small and niche-market services by writing them out of the law. But on the other hand, that same elaborateness invites years and years of disputes over interpretation that will only be accessible to organizations that can afford lawyers to argue them.

The latest definition of “online content-sharing service provider” that is supposed to either take licenses to copyrighted works or take steps to keep them off their networks is this mouthful:

“… online services that play an important role on the online content market by competing with other online content services, such as online audio and video streaming services, for the same audiences … the main or one of the main purposes of which is to store and enable users to upload and share a large amount of copyright-protected content with the purpose of obtaining profit therefrom, either directly or indirectly, by organising it and promoting it in order to attract a larger audience, including by categorising it and using targeted promotion within it.”

In other words, the law is — presumably — targeted only to major content-sharing services (YouTube) that compete with media companies’ owned or licensed services that don’t accept user-uploaded content (Netflix, Spotify). The list of types of services that are exempt from the law has changed a bit from the previous version of the bill: business-to-business cloud services (DropBox) are now exempt but “service providers the main purpose of which is to engage in or to facilitate copyright piracy” (Sci-Hub) are not. The enacted legislation maintains exemptions from previous drafts for the likes of Wikipedia, GitHub, iCloud, Google Drive, and non-profit scientific and educational content repositories.

At the same time, paragraph 4 of Article 17 — which contains the meat of the license, takedown, and filter provisions — contains language that will be worrying to startups and their potential investors. Despite the fact that other parts of Article 17 attempt to exempt small and niche-market services in general, Paragraph 6 calls for three tiers of responsibilities that depend on the age and size of the online service:

Services that are less than three years old and have annual revenues under €10 million (US $11.2 million) must make “best efforts” to take licenses to content or, if no license is available, respond to takedown notices.

Of those services, those with more than 5 million average monthly users must also “ma[k]e best efforts to prevent [] future uploads” of works that have been taken down pursuant to takedown notices — i.e., to implement what has been called “takedown and staydown.”

Services that are more than three years old or make more than €10 million also have to make “best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information[,]” i.e., to filter content proactively instead of just reactively after takedowns.

In other words, new and small services — as a practical matter, and provided that someone decides they meet the criteria for “online content-sharing service provider” shown above — will need to implement a notice-and-takedown regime similar to the U.S. DMCA — but also possibly be liable for not making “best efforts” to obtain licenses.

The lighter requirements are not difficult to administer, assuming that “best efforts” to obtain licenses is understood to mean working with the usual collecting societies and not tracking down arbitrary copyright owners for every piece of content uploaded. The problem is that the requirements expire in three years. In other words, when an entrepreneur or investor embarks on a new venture, the clock starts ticking until legal risks and expenses increase … maybe, depending on those definitions of applicable services above.

At least for the foreseeable future, this scheme will cast a pall not only over entrepreneurship but also over online services that serve niche communities. It also gives large copyright owners — and, indirectly, large service providers — perpetual leverage over the little guys, which is not good for competition. Contrast this with U.S. regulations for Internet radio (webcasting): while big commercial webcasters have to record stream data and pay royalties on a per-stream basis, small ones (as defined by revenue and/or non-profit status) can get away with simply paying nominal annual fees. (Advantages for small commercial webcasters have been whittled away over the years but they remain for the smallest educational non-profits.)

The second issue is the law’s requirements for copyright filtering. Under the new law, larger and older content services that choose not to take licenses to content will need to implement “takedown and staydown” (No. 2 on the list above) and then ultimately “ensure unavailability of works for which rightholders have provided information” (No. 3). In fact the final version of the legislation is more forthright about the filtering requirement than the previous version, despite its protestation (required under European law) that “[t]he application of [] Article [17] shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation.”

The difference between No. 2 and No. 3 is meaningful but not huge as a practical matter. The former requires service providers to keep lists of identifying information about content that has been the subject of takedown notices, while the latter requires them to use lists of identifying information about all content that rights holders don’t want uploaded in the first place. The latter implies the type of content recognition scheme that’s most widely used nowadays — such as Google’s Content ID or Audible Magic. A technology like those could be used for “takedown and staydown” by simply applying it only to items of content that someone has tried to upload instead of applying it to every item that rights holders submit to the vendor.

In other words, the now-official version of this bill lends credence to MEP Julia Reda’s statements that certain types of content-sharing services will have no choice but to implement filters — though the way I’d prefer to say it is that many of them will want to choose the filtering option as the less legally risky option. At the same time, there’s been a lot of talk about how expensive and elaborate filtering schemes will need to be in order to satisfy both rights holders and content service providers under this law; I never believed these doomsday predictions, and I still don’t.

My previous views, before the final round of text changes, were that it would take many years of high-powered lobbying and litigation to figure out what the filtering requirements actually are (given how vaguely they are worded), and that content services will shy away from overfiltering (false positives of content identification) because it will cost them audiences compared to competitors that don’t overfilter. While I still believe the latter, the latest changes to the law lead me to a different view on the former point.

There are two reasons why I suspect that content services will manage to avoid taking on expensive R&D-level projects that push the envelope of content recognition technology. First, paragraph 5 of Article 17 calls for the principle of “proportionality” — a fundamental concept in French law — to take into account the availability, cost, and complexity of technical measures as well as the online service’s type of content and audience. In the case of content identification technologies, it’s generally understood that advances in technology lead to diminishing returns in improved accuracy and effectiveness — particularly with regard to the fair use-like cases enumerated in paragraph 7 of Article 17, which are basically impossible to automate in filtering systems. In other words, fancy R&D initiatives to improve filtering are easily shown not to be “proportional.”

The second reason has to do with a little-noticed yet important new provision in the legislation that passed last week. Historically, deliberations between copyright owners and service providers about filtering technologies have have taken place in the dark, mostly hidden under private nondisclosure agreements or courts’ protective orders in lawsuits. U.S. courts have offered limited guidance through a few decisions about the adequacy of these technologies (or lack thereof), in cases such as Arista v. LimeWire, Universal Music Group v. Veoh, and Universal Music Group v. Escape Media (Grooveshark). The world at large knows little about how, and how well, these technologies work.

That secrecy and reticence could come to an end in Europe. Paragraph 10 of Article 17 sets up mandatory “stakeholder dialogues to discuss best practices for cooperation between online content-sharing service providers and rightholders … regarding the cooperation referred to in paragraph 4.” There are two important new wrinkles to this provision in the final version of the text. One is: “For the purpose of the stakeholder dialogues, users’ organisations shall have access to adequate information from online content-sharing service providers on the functioning of their practices with regard to paragraph 4.” The other is: “The [European] Commission shall, … taking into account the results of the stakeholder dialogues, issue guidance … regarding the cooperation referred to in paragraph 4.”

This means that online services that choose to filter rather than license will need to disclose what filtering schemes they are using. Service providers may try to use ambiguous and opaque language to meet this vaguely worded requirement in hopes that no one sues them. But everyone would be much better off in the long run if the European Commission could define standards for this information (akin to labeling standards that have been suggested in the U.S. for DRM) so that everyone understands who is using which technologies. When the European Commission issues its “guidance,” which presumably will be precedential on service providers, everyone will be better informed.

If this happens, the dialogues and guidance will not necessarily lead to more stringent filtering schemes — in fact, I’d say probably not. First, they could give users information to help them choose services with the most reasonable filtering schemes, which in turn will encourage more reasonable filtering, since the services with stricter or coarser filtering schemes will die off.

In addition, it’s important to remember that regulations or government-issued “guidance” never establish lower bounds that stakeholders are motivated to exceed; on the contrary, they establish basic standards that stakeholders have to barely meet. It’s safe to assume that the tech industry will argue vehemently in stakeholder dialogues against filtering requirements that cost them lots of money. Therefore if any innovation comes out of the process, it’s more likely to be in the form of more cost-efficient ways of doing the bare minimum.

It’s possible that these forces will balance each other out and minimize the burden on service providers that this law imposes while maximizing services’ utility for users. There’s no doubt that this law will burden online services and users alike; but at least as far as the stakeholder dialogues are concerned, it’s possible that balance and (yes) proportionality could prevail. And let’s not forget that it could also actually achieve its core objective and put more money in creators’ pockets.

Of course, all this depends on a process of clarifying the highly complex and vague language in the Directive and implementing it in the laws of all EU Member States. This process will take many years — at which time it remains to be seen if it’s even relevant anymore.

[huntedbyacreature]

So I binge read the Darth Vader comics, all five volumes (Vader, Shadows and Secrets, Vader Down, The Shu-Torun War and End of Games), followed by the Doctor Aphra comics (4 issues out thus far). Highly recommend. 

Aphra: Space Indiana Jones. I now understand all the Aphra hype. And I think she is totally under-hyped. Chelli Lona Aphra might be my new favorite character in the SW universe (previously spilled a bit of digital ink on Kylo here). She’s a bit like Han, but smarter, more resourceful, more devious, probably a better lover than he was to Sana, more in debt, more morally bankrupt, more badass and yet more vulnerable. More spoiler-y thoughts below.

Vader: Galaxy’s #1 (Most Extra™) Daddy. The lengths he goes to find Luke ... The tests (and indignities) the Emperor throws at him. So much betrayal and pain. Failure is not acceptable, most of all his own. You think he’s invincible but ...like Aphra, you would go in after him too. More below the cut.

Aphra, you’re what I’ve been looking for all my life

She’s a skilled mechanic who reanimates murderous droids and engineers elaborate robberies with stealth microdroid dust, magnetic fields and other techno-wizardry. Vader is impressed by her. When she’s not doing shady work for a certain Sith lord, she’s a “rogue archaeologist” mercenary (with a doctorate in question) who uncovers rare artifacts for profit. In university she was known for “romantic misadventures with brigands and ruffians” according to her doctoral supervisor. She’s probably bisexual. She uses delightful wordplay. She’s familiar with the arguments of Jedi grammarians. She has anger and abandonment issues. She holds her mother’s idealism (which led to tragedy) in contempt. She almost authorizes the torture of her own father. She believes in the cause of Empire (even as she seems to always thwart law and order and gets hunted down by the Empire). 

And she loves working with Vader. I bet she would love reanimating that machine of a man. Also, who hasn’t had a (very secret, totally well-hidden) crush on a mindblowingly hyper competent (but punishing) boss only to discover said boss has a ridiculously cute college-age son and then proceed to have a (very secret, totally well-hidden) crush on said son (who is admittedly too young for you)? 

In other words, she is the most raw and relatable mess ever. I relate so badly you have no idea. Finally, someone who doesn’t feel the need to be a “good” person or engage in any heroics.

It was clear she was a lot of fun to write for Kieron Gillen. "No, I don’t want to see your enormous undercover operation!” Girl’s been around the galaxy, she’s seen it all. I mean, ENORMOUS UNDERCOVER OPERATION? He evidently enjoyed slipping in some innuendo into this rated T (appropriate for most readers) comic that could easily prompt rated E fanfics.

And, even though she’s drawn very inconsistently across the comics (such that she could be any combination of indeterminate mixed races) and none of our racial/ethnic delineations apply in the GFFA, the writer has confirmed she would be portrayed by an Asian actress. So she’s the first canon Asian female character (before we get KMT’s character), as well as the first canon LGBTQ character. Well, I must have been living under a (large Reylo) rock all this time. As an Asian female with a doctorate (of sorts) and a not entirely straight relationship history, I am overjoyed by the representation.

What’s the deal with Vadaphra?

“I tried hard to avoid having any sexual tension between Vader and Aphra, but despite all that, in the depths of the Internet, Vadaphra is a thing. Nature will find a way.” Sure, Kieron, sure you tried hard. I mean, LIGHTSABER PLEASE.

Yes, it’s a blasphemous canon-defying ship. But I do see how the Vader comics lay some shippy foundations with the “is-he-going-to-murder-me-this-time” dynamic between these two and the ambiguity in their working relationship (as to whether they actually care for each other or are just pursuing their own selfish agendas). The dynamic also adds another more humanizing layer to Vader (as the Vader series are really about Vader as the protagonist, with Aphra as a supporting foil). You get the sense he ensures her survival for longer than he thinks he really should. He entrusts her with sensitive information and missions that further his personal interests. He sends an identity-shielded broadcast to a group of bounty hunters promising a sizeable bounty for retrieval of Aphra from the rebels. True, when asked if she was to be returned “dead or alive” he answers “it is of no matter to me,” but then again, he’s famously hard to read. Anyway, I understand how it could be a fun ship to explore.

Vader’s journey

As we see in a powerful series finale, as Vader meets his maker and nemesis Cylo, a scientist who specializes in cybernetic upgrades and believes in technological superiority over the "obsolete” Force, this journey is about Vader overcoming his own limitations. On the brink of death by deactivation, Vader fights to live and let go of his past. He masters his weakness. He does kill Anakin. He survives by rejecting the visions that would lull him into a deep and dreamless slumber. He uses the Force to control his own machine husk of a body and rise up.

He survives so he can continue his quest to find Luke. So he can overthrow the Emperor and rule the galaxy with his son by his side. In this light, the OT is a devastating tragedy. Because it is really about a father’s (pipe) dream, thwarted. 

At the beginning of the series, as he learns from Boba Fett that the rebel pilot responsible for the Death Star’s destruction is named Skywalker, Vader realizes that the Emperor lied to him about Padme’s death. In this moment (depicted in an emotionally impactful series of panels), his barely contained anger actually causes the viewport glass to crack. Further, he’s just discovered that the Emperor is pitting him against Cylo’s technologically enhanced “abominations” and has been working with Cylo for 20 years on these potential replacements (”all these years, you were considering replacing me”). Basically, he’s expendable and must prove himself. Vader really has no one on his side (except Aphra, arguably). But now, maybe, there is someone.

So Vader is desperate to find Luke. He operates behind the Emperor’s back, amasses a private droid army, conspires in the robbery of cargo impounded by the Empire, obstructs an extremely tenacious Imperial investigator, takes on an entire rebel fleet by himself in a single TIE fighter in what would be a suicidal attempt by anyone else, and so much more. 

That quiet desperation driving Vader’s extra-ness is at the heart of this series. It makes this shot of Vader in ESB, standing at the viewport after Luke has rejected him and escaped, all the more heartbreaking.

[olympus-summit]

Nesting Owls | Carmen + Nemesis + Shinobu | Epilogue

[ General CWs for full document: Dehumanization, PTSD, unwanted romantic advances, victim-blaming (both internal and external) ]

When the illusion imprinted upon them finally comes crashing down, another family takes root in the wreckage of what was once their reality. It takes a while for them to truly bloom, but after over a hundred and fifty years, what’s waiting a couple more years gonna hurt? They finally have a future ahead of them.

- - -

In a rare moment of rest among the hours of tireless work - dutifully studying over a century of information, with as much skill and precision as she did in her collegiate era - the Doctor decides that she really ought to decide on this new name.

Her new moniker is one of practicality, one forged for survival - she could not bear to be falsely referred to as Adelina any longer, and she needed a replacement. So she found some justice, in asserting her title. After countless colleagues looked down on her and refused to acknowledge her work, after they echoed the years of dismissal she got for factors beyond her control, they would now be forced to respect her title or not refer to her at all. It was almost poetic.

But she’s never been one for poetry. It served its purpose in the moment, but the moment has passed - she does not live out of spite. She does not wish to be defined by those who despise her, not in any way shape or form.

She’s decided on a new first name, at the very least. Carmen. After Carmen Rivera - who is her own mother, in a sense. She is not Adelina, but she did live with her for 24 years - she maintains her memories, until their paths diverged. She still remembers Mama’s work ethic, her grit and determination, her ability to get through to even the most problematic students. She still remembers Mama’s off-key singing voice and her gentle kisses and her kind words. She still remembers loving and being loved.

She’ll need that energy, in the long years to come. She’s long dead - but she can still honor her, still keep a piece of her with her.

Eventually, she comes up with a middle name - also to honor a woman she loved who has passed. Carmen Grace. After her late sister-in-laws maiden name. A connection to the past she’s lost without dwelling on it.

But then there’s the damned last name. 

And she’s just not sure. And she’s been stuck there, because she really can’t justify to herself trying to research last names during a time like this. 

Conversely, Nemesis had decided on a last name immediately. He hadn’t announced it right away, there were other things to focus on, but even on that first day when he’d realized he wanted a new name, the ideas had come to him. It felt almost natural, inasmuch as anything about this situation could. And so when the topic comes up with Carmen, he mentions casually enough what he’s chosen - Lechuza. Like the story he’d shared with Setsuna all those days ago, like the one Evren’s mother used to tell him, that had stuck with him for so many years. It felt like a nice compromise of the new while acknowledging the old.

She asks to take his last name - which would sound like a pickup line if they weren’t so no hetero. But she likes the sound of it - Carmen Grace Lechuza. She and Nemesis - he’s her best friend, he’s like a brother to her. She quite liked it. Sharing a last name with him.

So she began her new life.

- - -

Just as Shinobu had promised, they take on the job of supervising Team Prometheus throughout their stay on the airship, acting as both a communication proxy to keep different parties from coming into direct conflict, and a wedge to separate people when tensions do boil over. That isn’t to say Shinobu is perfect: They can’t be in every conversation at once, of course. Shinobu also quickly learns that having to relay everyone’s requests and grievances recenters much of the stress onto themself – even worse when it turns out there are matters that can’t be compromised on and that trying only makes everyone more upset.

Shinobu de-stresses by splitting their free time between the pool and gym, and the library. The former because they are familiar pastimes, and because some strength training might come in handy if a fight actually does break out (and maybe a few extra pounds of muscle will finally shut up Montgomery if he starts on his gamer bro b.s. again). The latter because… because at the end of the day, Shinobu doesn’t have any practical skills to offer to either the Councilors or the world as a whole. Their sociology education is not just incomplete, but obsolete, and if Shinobu ever goes into that field again it will have to be by starting from square one, after it’s safe to land the airship for good.

Plus, there are gaps in the Council’s knowledge that aren’t covered by doctors and programmers and revolutionaries. If they’re going to distribute all of Titan Production’s agricultural secrets to the public domain, then someone here’s gotta learn how to grow a damn potato. When Shinobu supervises Team Prometheus as they prepare themselves for farm life, they make sure to take their own notes. They wouldn’t dare call themself an environmental expert, but at least they’ll have some idea which suitable climates to raise Titan’s proprietary crops in without destroying the local ecosystem already there. Besides, being an ambassador to the real ecological experts will probably be less stressful than being an ambassador to their own torturers.

Until the day comes that they can return to society, Shinobu continues to work, cramming studies in not just the environment but in language, hoping to one day be fluent enough in Spanish and English to not rely on auto-translation devices. While they aren’t certain yet if they even have a place to call home anymore… Right now, home feels like Room 2. Home feels like Carmen commenting on her discoveries about the present-day world and how she plans to reclaim her life and education when she returns. Home feels like Nemesis grumbling about the complications in reverse-engineering Titan’s technology. Home feels like bringing them both some fried rice, because someone here’s gotta make sure they’re both eating well and Shinobu’s getting used to making low-effort bulk meals now.

If this is the sort of home Shinobu can expect in the future too, then the least they can do is make sure they’ll fit in.

- - -

Much of Nemesis' remaining time on the ship is spent closing the hundred and fifty year gap in his technological knowledge, a task made easier as much by the decades of stagnation as his own genius, and on coding and coordinating the takedown of Titan. It goes remarkably smoothly, so much so that even for weeks afterwards he continues the systematic dismantlement and erasure, making sure he leaves not even a scrap for them to work with long after the public has learned too much for Titan to ever re-stabilize anyway. He goes through their servers with a figurative fine-toothed comb and bricks everything he gets his talons into. 

It's not quite as satisfying as it would have been to see them burn, but Nemesis isn't who he used to be. The people he's formed connections with have made him better. No less angry, but now with a reason not to give into that anger - several reasons, in fact…

There isn't a lot of free time in the early days, but Nemesis fights his innate workaholic nature to make room for talks with Shinobu. Being around them is the closest he can get to feeling relaxed. There's no pressure, no sense of obligation, no concern about how they'll handle any particular truth about him, because they already know it all. It's unlike any relationship he's ever been in before, though the discussion over what their relationship is only seems to make it more ambiguous. They agree to take their time, to let things happen naturally, to get done the more pressing matters that need attending to and then see where that leaves or leads them.

Mostly, Nemesis finds, it leads them to keep sharing a room, and collapsing into the same bed at the end of a busy day. Even after the airship has landed and they've all received asylum in Castanea, when there are more than enough rooms to go around, the only times he gets any sleep at all are when he's curled up next to Shinobu. And he thinks he's alright with that.

They’re alright with Nemesis, too. More than alright. Even if they’re often too exhausted from work to do more than curl up together to share a meal or a nap, it’s moments like those that reassure Shinobu that they can be a normal person living a normal life, and that there’s a more personal reason besides vengeance and justice to fight for a better future.

The truth is, though, it isn’t just the current priorities that make Shinobu want to slow the pace. Knowing everything about Nemesis means knowing about the impact left on him not just by Titan and the Summit, but by Evren’s memories. Shinobu never wants to make him feel like he is obligated to be with them just because they’re the only guy here he can date. Nor do they want him to think they only care about the solace he offers.

Shinobu refuses to make Nemesis ever feel used and discarded again. They won’t dare allow themself to promise a future together before they’re absolutely sure their feelings are genuine. Shinobu’s found that a lot of things about themself they assumed were genuine had been manipulated by the Summit, after all. Their slow-burning pace is as much for their sake as it is for Nemesis.

Still, though. Still, their heart flutters every time they see the way Nemesis’s face lights up whenever he makes a new discovery about modern technology. Still, their breath catches in their throat when they wake up and find he’s still sleeping peacefully by their side. Still, their stomach churns with anxiety over whether or not they’ll be able to stay together after their work is done. Still, they’re overcome with a wave of relief when the airship lands, no one dies, and Nemesis embraces and asks them where they want to go next, together.

Still, Shinobu thinks they might be falling in love. (And they’re not the only one.)

- - -

And life continues.

[travel-voyages]

Why Interstellar Travel Is so Damn Hard

Basic physics goes a long way towards explaining why a pair of theoretical rocket engines may never come to fruition.

Max Genecov

Ever since we imagined the technological sophistication to send ourselves hurtling at escape velocity away from the Earth and toward some unknown pinprick of light in the unending vacuum of open space, obsessive individuals and paranoid governments have spent billions of dollars trying to figure out how to get as far away from our home planet as possible. So far, we haven’t accomplished much, cosmically speaking.

The history of rockets, up until recently, has always been chemical: a reaction takes place at explosive speed, and there, you have your propulsion and propellant. Ion engines, which accelerate electron-stripped atoms through an electric field, have been in use since the 70s, but they only work in the vacuum of space and have very low thrust that can’t be adapted to quick human space travel. As for the next big thing, the general idea that the American government has run with for the past 70 years—from Project Orion to Project Longshot to Project Prometheus—has involved strapping small nuclear bombs to the backs of rockets and hoping for the best. Needless to say, none of these have ever been built or are likely ever to be built; they were dreamed up with a future civilization in mind, one that had conquered the problems of nuclear fusion and international cooperation but still had no control over the Earth’s inevitable solar doom — let alone the effects of climate change that even the ultra-rich can’t escape, at least until they find a way to peace out and leave us to foot the bill.

 If you’re wondering why taking a trip to another star is incredibly difficult, blame physics. Conservation of momentum (or Newton’s third law, depending on how you want to look at it) requires a rocket to poop out some amount of mass at some speed (AKA explosive fuel) for the rocket to move. The sticking point is that the fuel still has to push the remaining fuel still unpooped and connected to the payload. This predicament can be turned into a formula that relates the change in speed to the amount of mass pooped out. It’s called the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, named after the father of modern rocket science. It can tell you that if you have a chemical propellant and you’re going to eject your fuel at, say, the maximum velocity of a nuclear fireball — around 100 km/s — and you want to travel 4.25 light-years over to Proxima Centauri, you’re going to need to have ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion times more fuel than payload if you want to get there in around one hundred years. Not to mention that we’d need double the fuel and time to slow down enough to take data from or drop passengers near the star. For a 1 kg payload, the fuel would roughly account for the entire mass of the universe.

 The sheer weight of the scientific difficulties facing interstellar travel is humbling, if not existentially depressing. Many space nerds have put their hopes in harnessing exotic engines that utilize badly understood (or entirely misunderstood) physics that might obviate the fuel problem. Two of them, the EmDrive and the Mach Effect Thruster, have been hyped by everyone from NASA to National Geographic as the solutions to our interstellar detention. It’s too early to say if either of them is a pipe dream, but their tantalizing likelihoods fade every day. 

The EmDrive has been shrouded in ambiguity ever since it was theorized in an unreviewed 2001 whitepaper by longtime UK aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer. He lays out an argument using only classical electrodynamics and its expression of radiation pressure to claim that a tapered container will necessarily make light in the container exert a higher pressure on the wider end than on the narrower end, hence creating thrust without anything more than an embedded microwave or radio wave source on the spacecraft. As with other perpetual motion devices and physical chimeras, the EmDrive would have been relegated to Shawyer’s drawing-table tinkering had the venerable tech magazine New Scientist not devoted a cover to it in 2006. Counterarguments resounded after the New Scientist issue — the decision to run the story at all has dogged the UK magazine’s sterling reputation ever since — with some pointing out that the forces required of the EmDrive would cancel each other out, others arguing that tapered waveguides can create diminishing power returns. Perhaps the most damning strike against the EmDrive in the average (or, more likely, armchair) physicist’s mind is that the a functional EmDrive would defy the conservation of momentum — a derivable law that is valid in everything from high school physics to general relativity — and end up  sending all of physics from Newton onward into a crisis.

But by putting the idea into the air, the damage had been done, and people started trying to build (or at least defend) the EmDrive. To stem the tizzy around breaking the laws of physics, many proponents of the drive pointed toward word salad concepts like “quantum vacuum virtual plasma” or untestable physics maybes like Unruh radiation as to why it would work without violating conservation of momentum. Whatever hypothetical physics concepts might cause the EmDrive effect or whichever concrete ones might doom it, hype around the engine has been strong enough to make NASA’s futurist skunkworks, the Eagleworks Laboratory, do rounds and rounds of tests on it and announce some tentatively positive results, along with a preponderance of possible sources of error. These, along with some claims of successful EmDrive tests by universities in China, are what have allowed the device to gain the hotly contested modicum of prestige it holds today. For his part, Shawyer seems to be doing great: after receiving a patent for the EmDrive in late 2016, he formed a joint venture with some guys who have been trying to make flying cars happen for more than a decade.

 It seems that engineers like Shawyer are always the ones who are proposing free energy machines or whatever, so in contrast, it’s promising that the Mach Effect Thruster has a very scientific conceit behind it. That Mach Effect derives from the fact that mass, velocity, and acceleration are all intrinsically connected in general relativity. Under acceleration, objects can be thought of as storing internal energy in the form of an increase in mass. That mass fluctuation disappears once the acceleration has ended. (Don’t get any of this confused with the Mass Effect video game series, where an exotic element can alter the mass of any object.) However, physicist James Woodward thought of a way to quantify and possibly store the energy of these fluctuations, creating a cycle of forward/higher-mass and backward/lower-mass motions that would result in net forward motion. Unlike Shawyer, Woodward explained this mechanism’s apparent break with conservation laws by first explaining that the conservation law can’t be broken and dreaming up some momentum exchange with “distant matter in the universe.” This bit of vague imagery is where the Mach Effect derives its name: Ernst Mach once proposed that, like velocity in special relativity’s reference frames, inertial mass can only be derived from an object’s relationship with every other object in the universe. It’s a New Age-y idea, to be sure, and by definition it can’t be fully proven, but the Mach Effect did at least set Einstein off in his formulation of general relativity, the most tested theory of modern physics that keeps being proven right.

But a recent paper from researchers at the Technical University of Dresden has thrown a lot of cold water on these futuristic space propulsion proceedings. The TU Dresden researchers’ EmDrive test rig, which the team built themselves, showed the same micro-newton thrust no matter how much power they put into the device, indicating that something other than the drive was, well, driving the signal. Something in that range can be derived from interference with the Earth’s magnetic field and the coaxial cables operating the amplifier. The drive’s only hope is that implementing a dielectric — an insulating material in which the speed of light is slower and electric fields are dampened — will change things, as it is central to Shawyer’s original devising of the engine. The German team did not use one because other positive results for the drive also did away with it. Nevertheless, the thrusts and thrust-to-power ratios reported in the paper are in the same range as the Eagleworks results. The only results outside of the micro-newton range? Shawyer’s own — he claims to have reached a thrust to power ratio beyond anyone else’s findings.

The Mach Effect Thruster fares better in the paper’s tests, but that isn’t saying much. The thrust (0.6 micro-newtons) reverses direction when the cabling is reversed but not when the thrust controller is reversed. Additionally, the observed thrust is around thirty times larger than predicted based on their experimental setup, making the actual Mach Effect, at best, “masked by electromagnetic/thermal issues.”

Both thruster models reached observable values “comparable to claimed values.” But, again, the observed values on the EmDrive can be attributed almost entirely to the Earth’s magnetic field; any result is just interference. It feels a little like when Einstein investigated Wilhelm Reich’s orgone box for an afternoon to see if the sex energy caused an anomalous gravitational effect. The dubious nature of the drives makes the Dresden team conclude their confirmation project savagely, as if they were assessing a tabletop experiment you might do in high school: “At least, [these drives make for] an excellent educational project by developing highly demanding test setups, evaluating theoretical models and possible experimental errors. It’s a great learning experience.”

However harsh their words might be, it’s not like these researchers want the drives to fail. Martin Tajmar, the UT Dresden physicist who was the lead author on the paper, wrote the book on advanced space propulsion systems — it’s literally called Advanced Space Propulsion Systems — and has been investigating these kinds of drives for over ten years. At the same time, though the prospect of propellantless propulsion can be liberating, it is also terrifying: an apparently free energy source can lead to a cascading, galaxy-destroying energetic feedback loop if not carefully controlled (a less dire scenario involving a successful free-energy drive would end with a bunch of physicists having to retheorize and relearn the entirety of their disciplines).

For the foreseeable future, we will have to settle for a less glamorous, less hopeful kind of interstellar travel. The Breakthrough Starshot initiative, announced two years ago, exemplifies the model that is our best hope in the next century or so of reaching other star systems, though it is by proxy. The project, which despite its feasibility still requires great leaps in material, computational, and economic technologies, entails jetting a gaggle of 1 gram, chiclet-sized “StarChip” spacecraft across space at 20 percent the speed of light, powered by enormous ground-based lasers and flexible photon sails that could survive subluminal gas buffeting and space dust collisions. They would send observations back to us over the wide expanse of lightyears and, therefore, actual years. As these tiny emissaries explore space, we would wait for their snapshots and postcards, the messages becoming arithmetically less frequent as they go further and further, while we remain tethered to our rock.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-interstellar-travel-is-so-damn-hard?utm_source=pocket-newtab