#as if he hasn't made multiple original works & the most recent one is literally the best thing in his filmorgraphy

[vanesawye]

seriously just saw someone say "why doesn't mike flanagan do original stories"

[liesoverthec]

the post hasn't surfaced yet so please use this ask to talk abt the objectification of the 911 men!!

Ahh May you’re too nice but also thank you, I’m gonna 😂💛

This got. CRAZY long bc I just had a million thoughts so I’m gonna stick it under a cut.

To be honest, I think the reason they do *any* sort of objectification at all is that middle aged and older viewers are used to being able to objectify actors to a certain extent. Lord knows it happens on literally every other single piece of media, and this is a mainstream broadcast show, not an indie series or the likes, so I think they have to cater to those people as well as us, and the WAY they do it is so interesting to me bc even when they’re doing it, they use it as a way to drive home other, deeper messages.

For starters, I feel like the show OG was trying to be in the pilot and the first few episodes would have objectified the men WAY more than we see now if there hadn’t been that shift in tone - the sex addict plot could have been SO much more extended and given us a lot more opportunities to see Buck shirtless and to objectify him and his body. So I find it SO interesting that around the same time as Bobby opening up about his family and his past, we also stop w/ Buck being blatantly shirtless all the time. Narratively, it signals to me the point where the writers moved away from the the typical tv show that will treat their actors like meat, and moved more into a “female gaze” show. And then what’s really interesting to me, is that for Buck, after that, when he has sex w Taylor Kelly in s2, both times we NEVER see him undressed. The second time they don’t get very far, but he’s wearing a buttonable shirt. He absolutely could have been wearing that shirt closed, and she could have opened it, and he could have been wearing nothing underneath it, and we would have seen his chest again in a sexy scenario - but they didn’t. In fact they made the DELIBERATE choice to give him an undershirt. And of course with the first time they cut away and just left us w the understanding that sex was happening, yet again taking away an opportunity to show O.S. at least partially undressed. Which is SO different from how s1 goes about it, where we actually see Buck w his shirt open and his underwear exposed MULTIPLE times. So it’s so incredibly interesting to me that while none of the (main/regular) women’s stories are ever about sex like Buck’s is, I also think it’s REALLY interesting that the objectification of the men was, and could have been, much worse and that they didn’t have to move away from that, but they did.

But then secondly! The very last time we get into a plot that revolves around the men’s bodies specifically is in 2x01, which is SUCH an interesting plot. Surface level - it’s just about the men competing about who’s more attractive, and we get lots of muscle flexing and hot manliness to go along with it. And it is, at a surface level, incredibly shallow. But simultaneously they use it to 1. Introduce the idea that Buck wasn’t a sex addict bc he was “dealing w the stress of the job” like s1 mostly implied. It was bc he’s desperate to feel useful and wanted by someone, and at that point he really wanted that acceptance within the firehouse, rather than from other people. (Bc lbr, Abby didn’t do shit for Buck. It was Bobby, opening up and accepting the family, and specifically Buck, that gave him the connection he’d been seeking through sex.) And then 2. They also use it as an opportunity to SPECIFICALLY, IN CANON, say that it’s what you do that makes you attractive, and that makes you a hero, not how you look. Which is just!!! A crazy message!!! Especially considering they follow through on it, particularly in the areas where the women are concerned!

And in regards to 2x01, it’s soooooo fucking interesting to me that the ONLY time we really truly see Eddie shirtless, he’s actually putting clothes ON. They literally do the opposite trope of 'giving the hot male an excuse to take his shirt off'. And sure, they make it a sexy moment, but there's absolutely interesting commentary there about him actively covering himself up at the moment he is most sexualized, and it being taken as a sexy thing. Something about how you don't have to be naked to be attractive, it's about your intent in your actions, rather than your physical body. (Probably me reading too far into it, but again, they COULD have had him striping off his regular shirt, a good few seconds of him shirtless digging through a bag, and THEN the sexy slow mo pulling shirt on. At the very least, when they objectify him there, they make it MUCH shorter than they could have, which is SO DAMN INTERESTING to me).

But then finally, we still do have shirtless scenes! But the fact that it’s Chim who’s shirtless is just SO FASCINATING. Bc THE WAY THEY DO IT - they're never dunking Chim in a lake, or having something spilled on him, like other shows would do, to get his shirt clinging to him and him to whip it off in a spray of water or whatever. It's in scenes where it makes sense for him to be shirtless, and its NEVER treated like a big deal. It's just Chim, in his body, comfortably living his life. So I think the way they do it gives him more respect than other shows give their male characters, let alone their female characters 💀

And it's SO interesting to me that they use Chim (I mean, besides the fact that K.C. clearly has muscles for days and wow of course you'd use Chim). But I just think - on any other show, it would absolutely be Buck who we see casually shirtless. And that WAS almost this show, which is why we saw him shirtless at all. But failing that, it should have been Eddie. And then of course, after Eddie, it should be Bobby. I mean, plenty of other shows go for the 'sexy middle-aged white man' (cough cough LS) so Bobby would be the next logical step in the "who are we gonna make our hot man?" ladder, also - P.K. has BICEPS THAT COULD CRUSH ME so I would not blame them for making him the hot one.

But - like I said in my tags on my original post - I'm always thinking about Chim's story in 2x01 with the calendar, and feeling like he never gets to be the hero (WHICH I COULD GO ON AND ON ABOUT HOW BEING THE HERO IS EQUATED THERE TO BEING THE HOT ONE, SO LIKE, CHIM BEING SHIRTLESS, SUBTLE REINFORCEMENT OF HIM BEING A HERO!) I love that for him, being the truly hot one on the team. And then you throw in his story from 2x04, and feeling like his life wasn't going anywhere and seeing him now, comfortable in his body and his life and being happy??

I wish no one had to be objectified and shirtless but I know this is broadcast tv, and honestly, the choice for it to be Chim, with his story and his background, in itself is I think a choice that makes me happy.

Of course, the show is nowhere near perfect, and I’d argue that it’s one of the areas they fall shortest in. Buck sleeping w his therapist would never have happened for a woman on this show, and it CERTAINLY wouldn’t have been brushed off again as a joke like it was in s3. And it really bothered me in 4x07 when the lady slapped Eddie’s ass, esp since he was clearly uncomfortable with it. I’d actually really enjoy seeing them write a plot for one of the men that addresses them feeling oversexualized as firefighters, and how people seem to think they have permission since the men are all public employees, bc I think the show could do it really well, and I think it’s an area that hasn’t been addressed on other shows recently (plus lbr I know I’m biased but I think OG would do it better if it has been done…)

So idk. I don’t know if I have a solid conclusion here. The show does SUCH a good job with the women, and a solidly less good job with the men - but I also see some really interesting choices at work that I really respect.

Thanks for the opportunity May, sorry if there was no coherent thread to this. 😂🤷‍♀️

[tragedyloved]

3, 4 & 14 !!

@tobeblamed

3. what current rp trend do you hate?

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh dude tumblr has been so dead for me that i dont even know what trends are going around right now.

4. How do you explain rp to someone in the real world?

For some reason, most people I've mentioned it to seem to kinda have some understanding of what it is and I'm always surprised. I think mostly everyone just figures it's DnD without the dungeon master. Or LARP through text. If they don't know like at all I'll just say it's basically collaborative story telling. One person assumes the role of one character, the other person assumes the role of a different character and you write a story together based on a mutually agreed upon plot. Like the adult version of kids taking figurines and pretending to be the characters in some made-up story they pull together. It's really not as difficult to explain. It's just a little embarrassing for some reason.

Fun story I mentioned recently, as in within the last few hours: when I was a few years into rping-- I started when I was 11 / 12 -- I was hooked to the family desktop, which turned out to be fine cause hardly anyone else used it. My younger brother was curious about what I was constantly talking about on this forum I was on and I told him "try it out" I had to be like 13/14 at the time, and he was 10/11 which was terrible of me but kids. He didn't get into it, but he did make two accounts on the forum and for the few hours he was amused he annoyed the shit out of literally every single person that posted in his thread because he chose to rp as Fred Fredburger from Billy and Mandy. and lemme tell you it was just a lot of "FRED FREDBURGER FRED FREDBURGER" and "I LIKE FROSEN YOGURT" "I LIKE NACHOS" for like 3 hours at everyone and they were actually trying to reply to this kid who was just trolling bc he found it so fucking funny.

14. Do you think rp has had a positive or negative affect on your life or you as a person?

This is actually kind of a loaded question. I think on one hand it's fun. It's loads of fun. I enjoy reading people's writing, I enjoy writing replies, I enjoy thinking about characters and making plots and just the whole... interactivity of it. On the other hand, when I was a kid pre-rp, I used to write a lot of stuff in multiple notebooks when i was around 9 or so. I had a ridiculous Harry Potter fic where he had a twin or something. And a vampire story. And a quest about an elf in some society. I also wrote the beginning of the story for @edeioninkina 's universe. When I first got a computer I wrote terrible fanfiction on FF.net. Then I found rp and...I stopped writing a lot of the original content. I stopped writing fanfics. I didn't finish anything because I'd be working on plots and stories and stuff for rp instead of focusing on my own work.

I also made a lot of friends online, but that kinda ended up replacing real life friendships in some sense because I spent so much time inside on my computer. And that hasn't changed. None of it has really changed. I stay on here even when it's dead, refreshing, because I'm addicted to tumblr specifically, i can't even say social media.

But like in a positive aspect: I'm pretty damn good at characterization I think because of it, dialogue is fantastic, interpersonal relationships between characters is good also. So in that sense my writing is better (and worse in some aspects) because of rp. I think if I can just find that middle ground where I can disengage for a while and then come back to it, it would be better, but I havent been able to do that.

[techscorn]

via iMore - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch blog

Absolutely no one has broken into Face ID's secure enclave or gained access to its data. All we've seen is headlines and videos involving family members and forensic artists trying to spoof it.

Face ID, Apple's facial identity sensor for iPhone X, is new and that's both scary and ripe for exploitation. We saw it happen with Touch ID, from all the concern that manifested when Apple announced it alongside iPhone 5s to the sensationalized headlines and the attempts to spoof it after it launched. Now, we're seeing the same thing with Face ID — fear, uncertainty, and doubt spread before it was even released and spoof attempts are following in a post-video-first, think-through-the-logic-flow second frenzy.

It's a shame. Face ID is incredibly enabling and accessible technology that can all but eliminate active authentication for users and allow them to unlock and use their iPhones more simply and easily than ever before. But those same people, the ones who could benefit the most, are being assaulted by an endless stream of headlines that are, bluntly, worse attacks than many of the so-called exploits they claim to be reporting.

I know this because every time one of those headlines goes live, I get calls and messages from my family members who are suddenly panicked by them. And they don't deserve that. Nobody does.

Face ID facts

Before Face ID was released alongside iPhone X, Apple published a white paper covering its implementation and current limitations. The company followed up with a support article.

I summed them all up, and some logical extensions, in my iPhone X review:

Face ID, as currently implemented, does not work in landscape orientation. (The camera system is optimized for portrait.)

Face ID needs to be able to see your eyes, nose, and mouth to be able to function. If too much of that area is blocked by IR filters (like some sunglasses) or other objects (like masks), there's not enough of your face to ID. (This is like the gloved finger with Touch ID.)

Direct sunlight on the Face ID camera can blind it, just like any camera. If you're standing with the sun directly over your shoulder, turn a bit before using Face ID. (This is like the moist finger with Touch ID.)

If you're under the age of 13, your facial features may not yet be distinct enough for Face ID to function properly and you'll have to revert to passcode.

Face ID can't effectively distinguish between identical twins (or triplets, etc.) If you have an identical sibling or even similar looking family member, and you want to keep them out of your iPhone X, you'll have to revert to passcode.

If you give someone else your passcode, they can either delete and re-setup themselves on Face ID or, if they look similar to you, enter the passcode repeatedly at failure to retrain Face ID to recognize their features as well/instead.

Unlike Touch ID, which allows for the registration of up to 5 fingers, Face ID currently only allows for one face. That means no sharing easy access with family members, friends, or colleagues.

If, for any reason, you don't like the idea of your face being scanned, you'll have to revert to passcode or stick with a Touch ID device.

There doesn't seem to be anything shown off in video or breathless headline since that doesn't fall under any of these limitations.

Hack vs. spoof

One of the most egregious errors in reporting that's gone on around Face ID also echoes those we saw years ago with Touch ID: The conflation of hacking with spoofing.

When people hear or read the word "hack", it's easy to imagine someone got into the system. In this case, the secure enclave on Apple's A11 Bionic chipset that houses the neural networks for Face ID and its data.

That absolutely has not happened. For both Face ID and Touch ID, the secure enclave remains inviolate. (That's very different from early HTC and Samsung implementations, which stored fingerprint data in world-readable directories...)

What we have seen is people try to spoof it or fool it into thinking its capturing legitimate biometric data. We saw this with Touch ID as well. We saw fingerprints being lifted and reproduced for the express purpose of fooling the sensor system. Even before biometrics, we saw this with traditional keys. People would scan and reproduce keys to get into door locks. It's exactly the type of attack you try against physical security systems.

Now we're seeing the same thing with family members, masks, and. Face ID.

Family Face ID feuds

Earlier this month, we saw two brothers post a video claiming one could unlock the Face ID system of the other. I covered it at the time:

One of the videos that got a lot of attention this weekend was made by two brothers, both of whom were eventually able to get Face ID to unlock the same iPhone X. It was revealed in a follow-up video that the first brother set up Face ID, then the second brother then tried to use it and was properly locked out. Then the second brother entered the iPhone X passcode to unlock.

If someone else, including your sibling, has your iPhone X passcode, Face ID doesn't even exist. You've given them much higher access than even Face ID allows — including the ability to reset Face ID and other data on your iPhone X — and, literally, nothing else matters at that point. Keys to the castle. Time to go home.

But for Face ID in particular, there's some interesting behavior that's worth being reminded about: The neural networks that power Face ID are designed to learn and continue to match your face as you change your appearance over time. If you shave your mustache and/or beard, if you change your glasses and/or hairstyle, if you add or remove any makeup and/or facial decorations, as you put on or take off hats and/or scarves.

In the video, the second brother wasn't fooling or tricking Face ID in any way. By entering the Passcode was training it, as designed, to learn his face. By entering the Passcode multiple times, the second brother was literally telling Face ID to add his facial data to the first brother's.

More recently, we've seen younger siblings or children unlock the Face ID systems of older siblings or parents. In those cases, Passcode could also be used to train Face ID so it thinks the similar face is a new state of the registered face. In other words, it's introducing fuzziness into the system.

Even in cases where Passcode isn't being used to train a similar face, they're running into two of Apple's previously disclosed limitations:

If you're under the age of 13, your facial features may not yet be distinct enough for Face ID to function properly and you'll have to revert to passcode.

Face ID can't effectively distinguish between identical twins (or triplets, etc.) If you have an identical sibling or even similar looking family member, and you want to keep them out of your iPhone X, you'll have to revert to passcode.

If the facial geometry is the same and the relative is young enough that that they lack distinct facial features of their own, the chance for spoofing increases.

Mask confusion

Most recently, a Vietnamese security firm was given headlines when it claimed Face ID was successfully spoofed by dummy face. Similar to how the two brothers initially showed what looked like an immediate unlock but was subsequently disclosed as Passcode-enabled training, there turned out to be more to the mask-attack than the video first showed.

From Reuters:

Ngo Tuan Anh, Bkav's vice president, gave Reuters several demonstrations, first unlocking the phone with his face and then by using the mask. It appeared to work each time.

However, he declined to register a user ID and the mask on the phone from scratch because, he said, the iPhone and mask need to be placed at very specific angles, and the mask to be refined, a process he said could take up to nine hours.

Machine Learning learns

People can shoulder-surf you (spy by looking over your shoulder) to learn your passcode. If you fall asleep they could put your finger on Touch ID. If they're a close family member or twin, they may be able to fool Face ID.

Those first two attacks are against static targets. Passcode never gets harder to spy. Touch ID is a simple data comparison. Face ID, on the other, hand learns.

Right now that learning is being tested and, in some cases, it's letting in look-almost-alikes that it should keep out. But Apple designed not only the current neural networks to adapt over time, Apple designed them to be replaceable with better neural networks over time.

From my Face ID Explainer:

Face ID keeps the original enrollment images of your face (but crops them as tightly as possible so as not to store background information). The reason for this is convenience. Apple wants to be able to update the neural network trained for Face ID without you having to re-register your face. This way, if and when the neural networks are updated, the system will automatically retrain them using the images stored in the same region of the secure enclave.

With Face ID, we don't have to wait for new hardware for it to improve. Apple can and undoubtely will improve any and every time the neural networks get updated.

Choose your own unlocks

With similar-looking relatives, concerns over false positives and unintended or unwanted access are absolutely legitimate. It can be mitigated by switching to a passcode, but Face ID is so convenient many will want to use it anyway. In those cases, it's important to remember that Face ID isn't binary. You can turn it on or off but you can also choose what Face ID can unlock even when it's on.

You can individually enable or disable Face ID for:

iPhone unlock

Apple Pay

iTunes and App Store

Safari AutoFill

Other Apps (on an app-by-app basis)

So, if you're worried about your sibling or child unlocking your iPhone, you can turn off Face ID for that but leave it on for everything once you unlock your iPhone with Passcode. You could also leave Face ID for unlock, but turn it off for purchases if you're worried about those.

Yes, all of those introduce inconveniences, but they let you pick your own inconveniences. And if any of them are a real deal breaker, Apple also offers iPhone 8 with Touch ID, and Passcode and Password options for every iPhone.

Face to Face ID

When you tap a password manager or banking app and you watch it unlock, or you go to a website and your login suddenly fills before your eyes, it makes you forget passwords and passcodes exist. Convenience, though, is perpetually at war with security.

Face ID, like Touch ID and all biometrics, is about convenience. and identity. If you're truly concerned with security, you'll want to use a long, strong, unique password. But that's not tenable for most people. So that convenience and identity becomes vitally important.

And despite all the FUD and frantic headlines, Face ID delivers that. And, in most cases, in a far better, more transparent way than any authentication system before it.

So, by all means be informed. Read and watch everything you can. But don't let anyone scare you just so they can get views or make headlines. Try it out and decide for yourself.

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