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tjroewrites · 7 years ago

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Light to My World | Chapter Three

It took her twenty minutes to get to the reactor level from the third level corridor, and another ten to reach the surface level. No one would notice she was absent in the chaos. Eric might. But he wouldn’t say anything. Not until tomorrow.

The keys on the keyboard were hardly functional. Eileen had to shove her fingers into the letters just to make it work. The caps lock button was missing but the shift key seemed halfway decent.

Her finger hesitated over the ‘enter’ key. The keyed-in password glared at her from the screen, through twenty years of dirt and neglect. The voice in her head screamed at her. Do it, do it, do it. They’re hiding something. The truth was right there. It’s not like anyone would even realize she’d hacked the terminal unless she told them. No one was around the enforce protocol anymore. There was nothing to be afraid of.

But what if the information on the terminal was damnable evidence? What if some malfunction within the Casket was hidden on this terminal and by the time she found it they would be too late? What if there was some weird experimental species growing underneath the Casket and unlocking the terminal would release it?

Jesus, she needed to relax.

The ‘enter’ key was stickier than the rest. It took three hard jabs until it finally clicked, a loading bar appearing across the screen. Then, it disappeared. A bright, bold ‘Welcome, Ted!’ appeared in its place.

She was in.

A list of options took form. Without looking from the screen she fumbled for the chair collecting dust off to the side. A cloud of dust blew from the cushion as she flopped into it. She wiped the grime from the screen away with her palm to better read the list.

Daily logs. Cap Notes. Surface level maintenance reports. Employees. Security. Weekly Goals/Long-Term Plan. Message Board. Personal notes. Terminal Settings.

Eileen peeked over her shoulder to be sure she was alone. Nothing but her and the fizzed-out pieces of technology.

Most of the accounts didn’t come as a surprise to her. Mostly overviews of the control boards on the surface level. A majority hadn’t been functional in years. Besides a few things regarding the reactor and air filtration maintenance history catching her eye, nothing really struck her as crucial.

Wait. She read the list one more time. Message board.

Message board.

They had a message board?

When Eileen had first started work as a grave digger, one of the first things she learned about was one of the Casket’s largest flaws: Communication. The original designers had been so focused on survival that they had thrown the possibility of communication with other Casket’s out the window. It wasn’t crucial in their eyes. Safety first. Emails second. Besides, they wouldn’t have an established internet system below ground. There wasn’t any point. Right?

She selected the option. An entire new window appeared. There were over 1,000 messages.

Casket 003, Casket 068, Casket 023. Numbers Eileen didn’t even know existed. There was an entire folder dedicated solely to messages between Casket 001 and Casket 017. She checked the names of some of the senders. Government officials. Original grave-digger designers. There were a handful written by the original Grave Digger and mastermind behind the Administration security system himself, Timothy McClue. Even a few direct messages from the president himself. Daryll Thom. The Ghost. She pressed the ‘escape’ key a bit harder. There was nothing but junk. She went to push herself out of the chair and head back to the reactor for her earful from Eric.

The screen flashed. She almost missed it. A quick blip near the corner, where the ‘Inbox’ folder sat. Almost immediately after the ‘Spam’ folder pulsed. A new message.

Eileen lowered into the chair once again selected the ‘Junk’ folder. Another Casket, maybe? The Ghost? She selected the ‘Junk’ folder and waited for it to load. Hundreds of emails appeared, all from the same address. A jarbled bunch of numbers. No rhyme. No reason. Just… numbers.

‘For any and all residents of Caskets,’ the message read. ‘Danger. Infrastructure of Casket is failing. Dozens have collapsed. Thousands dead. Evacuate immediately. Above ground is livable. I repeat, above ground is livable. Evacuate immediately.’

Every message was similar. Sent every single day, over the course of fifteen years. Ever since they had left. To every Casket in the country. All signed with the same signature: SW.

Eileen sat back in the chair and stared at the screen. Above ground was livable. Above ground was livable. How was that possible? For weeks she had watched county after county collapse from air contamination on every news network on T.V. Coastal cities underwater from the endless hurricanes. Hawaii had become the equivalent of Atlantis. Crops were but a distant memory. Geiger counters jumped to new peaks from the overflow of nuclear dump sites across the globe. ‘Judgement Day is here,’ a common phrase blasted across every tabloid on the news stand. ‘The Apocalypse is upon us.’

But this mystery email, this ‘SW’, was claiming it was all – what, a fake? A fairytale? Something birthed from nightmares? Not only that, but asking for every Casket to evacuate due to failing infrastructure. Eileen was a grave digger. The very backbone behind Casket 017. She would know if something was failing. She would know if they were in danger. They would all know.

But Eileen had always felt something was off. The way the government just poured them into the Casket with little to no information on what would come of it. Hell, the only reason the grave diggers knew what they did was based off of trial-and-error alone. There had been no training. No warning. It all happened so fast. This had never been their choice.

Her fingers hovered over the keys, poised above and curled slightly. What should she say? What could she say? Was this ‘SW’ even alive? What if these messages were sent on some kind of timer, and they hadn’t been near their terminal in months? But that voice returned. Deep within her head. Calling out to her. You’ll never know if you don’t attempt, it said. Make the attempt.

‘Casket 017. Boston District.’ She typed. She peered over her shoulder one more time before she continued. ‘This is Grave Digger 0958. Requesting response from SW. Please respond.’

She selected ‘send’ before she could back out. The message disappeared into the monitor. On its way to whoever the hell ‘SW’ was.

Eileen didn’t know what to do. Should she wait? Who knows how long that would take. Months, maybe. Years. She’d probably sooner die up against the Cap before hearing from this conspiracy theorist. Probably some teen from Casket 042 in the Seattle district who got into his parent’s stash again. Some kind of practical joke.

And how would she tell Eric? Should she tell Eric? He already knew about the terminal. If he had half a brain he’d piece together the reactor malfunction with her sudden disappearance to the surface level. He wouldn’t rat on her. But it might make things difficult for a while. And having tension while living in a tin-can hole in the ground with thousands of other people? It wasn’t pleasant, to say the least.

The screen flashed. Eileen almost shot out of the chair. Another new message.

Holy shit.

Her fingers flew across the keys, striking a few random ones in the process and fumbling to the ‘Junk’ folder. That same garble of numbers stared back at her from the sender bar.

‘Grave Digger 0958. Action is necessary. Evacuate Casket 017 immediately.’ Her heart pounded a bit harder with every word. ‘-SW.’

There was no possible way that this was an automated message. It was sent directly to her. No other Casket had been CC’ed. SW was typing this live-time. SW was alive.

‘SW. Which Casket are you located in?’ Eileen typed in reply. ‘How do you know the Casket’s are unstable?’

She hit the ‘send’ button. Hardly two minutes passed before she received a response.

‘Grave Digger 0958. I am not located in a Casket.’ The message read. ‘I repeat, above ground is livable. –SW.’’

Eileen stared read and re-read the message over and over again. Above ground is livable. Above ground is livable. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea. It was too large of a leap to take their word for it. She needed proof.

‘SW,’ she typed. ‘From my understanding, all life was evacuated to Caskets. Surface is inhabitable. Evidence required before action is taken.’

Five minutes passed. Maybe this ‘SW’ had been making it all up. Maybe it was just a rebellious teen from another Casket. Then, the computer flashed.

‘Grave Digger 0958. Time is short. Action should be taken immediately. Trust in us. –SW.’

Something stirred in her stomach. How could she trust in someone she had never seen or met? Eileen was a Grave Digger a scientist. Her entire career, her way of life, was based solely on fact. ‘I repeat, evidence is required.’ She typed. ‘I will not send my people to their death unless I see evidence proving otherwise.’

This reply was almost instantaneous. ‘You condemn your people to their death by keeping them held beneath ground. Warnings have been issued for many years. The time for evidence has long passed.’

‘Evidence,’ Eileen slammed each key with unnecessary force. ‘is required.’

The ‘Junk’ folder went quiet. She refreshed the page every few minutes. No flashes. No ‘SW’. Nothing. She waiting fifteen minutes before developing half a mind to abandon the entire endeavor. At twenty minutes, a new message appeared.

‘Grave Digger 0958.’ It read. ‘We are three days journey from your location. Maintain access of terminal.’ Her eyes nearly rolled out of her head. ‘Further instruction will be given once we are close. –SW.’

‘We.’ They said ‘we.’ As in, multiple people. There was a group of them. And they were coming here. To Casket 017. In order for Eileen to force a Casket evacuation.

What had she done? They could be monsters. Psychos. Some weird, cannibalistic faction that had been twisted by the surface elements and hell-bent for blood. And now they knew which Casket she were located in. What district they were in. She shut down the terminal and stared blankly at the black screen.

Jesus, Eileen.

#eileen leahy #eileen leahy x sam winchester #kari's spn girl power challenge #spnangstbingo #fluff #angst #post apocalyptic #apocalypse #supernatural #spn series #light to my world series

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ratherhavetheblues · 5 years ago

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CLAIRE DENIS’ TROUBLE EVERY DAY “It doesn’t fit”

The films of Claire Denis tend to elicit a tribute to her audacity. On the heels of that given, there is the thrill of a supposed pronounced modernity. Viewers and reviewers directly understand that narrative means virtually nothing to her, because her forte is “mood” and “texture,” being apparently applied in such a way as to constitute a new and superior logic.

A film like, Trouble Every Day (2001), our challenge today—and quite widely thought to be her breakaway magnum opus—happens to be suffused with not only the narrative of Ingmar Bergman’s film, Scenes from a Marriage (1973), but also Bergman’s, The Passion of Anna (1969); and more Bergman to come. Those infrastructural crises therewith, which Denis handles—as always, with sophistication and delicacy—do not, in fact, countenance cannibalism as a cosmological method. Nor do they countenance a mobilization of neuroscience to develop a medicine to curb sadistic murder by which the gratification remains, but free of messy bloodshed and messy law.

It must be made clear from the outset that Denis has no time, per se, for the infantile fantasy-pastime of vampires. Two broad hints concerning that matter should suffice. In connection with the stately Japanese filmmaker, Yasujiro Ozu, she shuts the door in this way: “I dislike cinephilia and the cult of auteurism” [which is to say, genre, tried and true entertainments, like horror movies]. A second distancing, from a BBC broadcast on the subject of violence in, Trouble Every Day, says a mouthful: “This film concerns what happens when you tangle with something that is stronger than you are.”

Moreover, the gauntlet she tosses down comprises a showdown—involving a Shane being a shame far from well-known and far from readily resolved. We will have many opportunities here, to ponder its features. But its amazing overture should come first.

On a black screen, we hear a keyboard placing three beats, for a baseline, a calm baseline. A slight lift of intensity in that poise discloses a couple parked in the night. The woman’s presence is a sketch of blackness with a touch of her white shoulders and face. She is in her forties as is he. She is a blonde, and she’s smiling. Slowly they kiss. The musical motif spreads unhurriedly. He strokes her throat. A more earthy kiss ensues. A singer with a low voice covers the rest of this vignette, in voice-over.

Look into my eyes.

You see trouble every day.

It’s on the inside,

So don’t try to understand.

(The kiss endures.)

I get on the inside of you.

You can blow it all away,

Such a slight breath.

And I know who I am.

(The screen becomes black. A refrain in strings intensifies the mood.)

Look into my eyes…

Hear the words I can’t say…

Words that defy…

And they scream out loud.

(A Gallic air takes form, in the key of Marianne, having been released from the days of eighteenth-century revolution and reason. [A protagonist, in Scenes from a Marriage, is named Marianne—ironically!] And here the ancient stones, defining the riverbank of the Seine, solidify with a warm golden glow. Upon that stage, two golden pillars and a silver to their right describe the makings of an interplay, an interplay crucial to the work of Ingmar Bergman.)

I get on the inside of you.

You can wave it all away,

Such a slight thing,

It’s just the raise of your hand…

(Two reddish statements, and a golden between, followed by the morning sky with pink and purple clouds racing across the firmament.)

And there’s trouble every day,

There’s trouble every day,

There’s trouble every day.

(The luminous blue, carrying the title upon black, becomes sliced, rippling on the Seine, a reminder that trouble every day stems from a horde of resentment that life is harder than most want to engage.)

The penultimate coda of this dazzling lightshow involves apparitions in the sky and reverberance down low. Two down beats, and a cut to an appalling love. However, it’s probably advisable to go slowly from the highs to the lows. At the outset of Bergman’s The Passion of Anna, Andreas, a farmer/ artisan smiles when noticing a lovely, unusual color in the sky while trying to repair his broken roof. He becoming a disgrace, unable to counter Anna’s evil; and also Marianne, proving to be deviously rational and frivolously rebellious—they marshaling their incompetence in the twentieth century. But we encounter here a toehold of another, new century which finds “real security” [Anna’s mantra] to inhere in a huge and remarkably homogeneous gratification free from ever having to engage in bona fide grown-up reflection. We begin our conundrum back in the skies with a commercial jet in flight, focused upon the “First Class” area, where a couple of newlyweds toast their honeymoon to Paris with champagne. June, the glowing bride, is about to join the other’s mentioned as being a great disappointment, and even so far as being Gallic. But the disappointments here require innovation to fathom, due to the glue sticking to so many souls. Her first presentation is to refer to the map on the screen confronting her at the seat ahead of her. The schematic diagram resembles the features of a video game, but she discloses, “That must be Denver” [airport]. Denver or not, the payoff, identifying them as very likely Californians, is valuable orientation. Its irony goes a long way, to Marianne’s estranged husband, Johan, a neuroscientist (in Stockholm, in the twentieth century), who was slated to be the new Chair at a university in Cleveland—Cleveland, in the parlance of Bergman, and latterly Jim Jarmusch and his friend, Claire Denis, standing for very poor grades. As it happens, Johan is found to be lacking, and he doesn’t get to enjoy Cleveland. But here—with a kind of behind-the-back-basketball-move—he becomes known to one, Shane, the new groom, also a neuroscientist. And though they occupy discrete centuries, a cinematic current has sprung up (as deft as a Bergman drama), because all these folks carry troubling, though variant, traits, by which one might sharpen a keener sense of present dilemmas and promising delights.

Shane’s namesake, a film figure from the previous century, and a generous loner, in fact, quickly becomes an obverse in the new century. Later that night, he visits the bathroom. His mission, though, is very odd, namely, a protracted fantasy of June, nude, covered in blood. He savors that shock; and now we have to get down to brass tacks about lovemaking in this groom’s perspective. To convey what transpires here in all its baffling flight, we’ll complete that down beat, snubbing all the vivacity having been put on display at that remarkable overture, a gift including a down beat of its very own, whereby a touch of motion reveals a very different world—a world of quiet, infinite ecstasy having been instrumentally joined by a finite sensibility deriving its gifts of action from a matrix of paradoxical love. (The musical opening, by an agency called “Tindersticks,” will have bid to bring us to that love.) That it is vastly bound to a process which “can wave it all away,” becomes the core of this crisis and the introduction of one of the masters of bloodshed, namely, “Core,” on tap by way of that wayward down beat.

There is much about her that is a common hooker, preening that day by her ugly van in a part of the outskirts never having been graced by a serious thought. A truck driver, with his windows decorated with hanging toys, perhaps prizes from festivities of “games of skill,” bites on the lure. (Neither of them can compare with the huge vehicle, particularly its slats of rubber on its side, bringing to mind an elephant.) We see close-up her hyena-eyes; and we link them to the pink clouds there, above a hodge-podge of electrical towers, charmless of course, as is its worn-out golden patina up there. We’re spared the transaction itself; but the kill on the ground tells what has occurred. From out of a pretext of pleasurable coitus, her intensities slide, in a one-track race (where tempering is there to show discipline) to punishment and its dominance, its advantage over others. The grotesque corpse has been not only beaten, but eaten as would a wild beast. The ambiguities of that phenomenon lead us to vast intricacies of contemporary struggle and delight.

We should consider the year—2001—when this film was produced. In Denis’ France, religious fanatics had had a decade-long field day butchering “infidels.” Then there was 9/11, and more of the same. Then a blizzard of school shootings. Then Trump. All of whom fatally lacking intrinsic nuance. This was, then, a world history Bergman never encountered in the form of undeclared wars. That violence, however, as Denis well knows, intersects with a rage of blind self-esteem and a leveraging of effete affluence to dispense with the demands of nature itself. Anna’s rampage could identify a cause—“Security,” however puerile. What our guide is engaging in this film is a tidal wave of energy for the sake of destroying depths, those depths seen in the overture.

The immediate sequel to that slaughter at the highway tends to sprout parody. Core is braced with a former neuroscientist whom everyone calls, “Leo.” (He being in the footsteps of Johan, the self-styled, “sexy-guy”/ psychologist, and whom Shane has far more interest in than with June. That would leave Core, the new Marianne, as a kind of lawyer shark, always on the go.) Leo’s a bust as an inventor of a panacea for cannibalism—Shane’s only interest; but he’s a kind of sheep dog in rounding up wayward, Core. (Though just as basely naïve as the other members of that scientistic cult, Leo is the only one having been visited—slightly—about the farce of his “researches.” [His pratfall falls in line with the sterility of Johan’s embarrassments in the rat-race to bring cogency where, in fact, another range of cognition beckons while at the same time the straitjacket of “hard” science prevails. His dashing optics on his chic motorcycle to finesse his partner’s indiscretion involves his cleaning up the blood and flesh lingering upon her face and body. The gentleness of this concern places him [in fact much older than the other protagonists] as making a hapless equilibrium while the callow pipsqueaks of his sad mistake consult their inner child.) Whereas Johan and Marianne were regarded—by a socialite magazine—to be perpetually honeymooners, the this-century honeymooners sport all woolen apparel, in the spirit of Bergman’s, The Serpent’s Egg (1977); but very much also bringing to the table the rigor of Anna, the slasher of flocks of sheep. (Abel, in The Serpent’s Egg, having also been a blue-blood, and even more dysfunctional than the protagonists in Scenes from a Marriage. Shane and June’s plane, about to land, cruises over Leo and Core’s dead-end. Along a spiral staircase there, we notice a stained-glass window, reminding us of the skillful, bemusing and feckless artisan, Andreas, in Anna’s blistering saga, where an outrage would be a one-person idiocy, not a generational idiocy.

As such, the arrival of the Californian lovebirds at their five-star hotel involves a woman taxi driver dressed like a polite apache—exactly what an LA up-and-coming would like to see through his ridiculously stunted vision. The two of them in their woolen garb (he in baby-blue) create a little buzz when the desk clerk sees that the establishment has been chosen by a “Doctor” Brown. (Blue on the outside, shit on the inside.) Before that, the rather morose visitor rubs his eyes continually, leaving the servant behind the desk ill at ease. Shane, the name being a non-stop joke, demands someone handle the bags, which elicits from the staffer, “Quite so, Mr. Brown!” The porter chosen is a young girl, Christelle, one of the chambermaids on their floor. From out of his adolescent reflexes, he treads closely behind the girl, intent on her nape, and once into their room, with Christelle beginning to make the bed (June helping her), he flops upon it, as so many snotnoses would find to be part of his supposed mystique. (This bit of distemper had been preceded by his formulated carrying of June across the threshold to be deposited on the bed. The threshold included the room’s number, 321—a backward slapdash, failing totally to attain to the sublime.) The unflappable, deadpan maneuvering by Christelle in face of the ugly American, is right out of Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot (1953). (Real surreal France, by way of an Irishman.)

Before the full-scale damage gets underway, we want to savor another instance, this time in the old century, of that rugged individualism evincing from Christelle. In her capacity of divorce lawyer, Marianne comes across what she would tend to refer to as an unskilled laborer—the middle-aged client using the term, “housewife.” The latter, otherwise comfortable with an attentive husband, insists that her marriage lacks cogent love, and that she’s determined to attempt to discover the real thing. Marianne, the daughter of a lawyer and looking down her nose at the audacity of small cash-flow, finding something her sainted family wouldn’t touch, concludes the interview with candid frostiness. Shane—a mid-century name for courage—will eventually butcher the young laborer, being a measure of how Bergman’s troubled souls had it relatively easy.

The honeymooners choose Notre Dame Cathedral to extend their questionable tour of the City of Light. Instead of pondering the structure itself, and its functions, Shane, beyond redneck, regards the ancient recipient of intense reflection to be a pretext for recalling a Hollywood melodrama. On an exterior height he thinks to be funny by igniting the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Phantom of the Opera. There also he plays a stiff-corpse vampire. June proves to be only too polite here, showing that (as we’ll discover), whatever her French life before the rich Californian came into it, it has capitulated to an ugly know-nothing. And then a turnaround—not for them, of course—brings to the melancholy trek a sign of deep joy. Up there pissing around, her green headscarf catches a welcome gust, and both of them gaze as it soars above the ancient buildings and bridges. The limestone-white baseline of the City becomes touched by that verdancy. In another Bergman film, namely, Summer Interlude (1951), many such vivacious happenings occur, as if drawing a self-important figure to get real. There it’s called a “glitch.” And the ballerina being summoned to no avail stays mediocre. (Just before Christelle is attacked by the American—June’s aunt having referred to him as “like a church mouse”—the chambermaid soaks her aching feet in a sink, in the nether part of the palace. The supple motions of her simple bath links her to the disappointing ballerina. Christelle [and also Marianne’s annoying client] had lived in a vague but viable terrain of the “glitch,” which appears in spades at that glorious overture. Cadging goodies from the carts, when the coast is clear; lying back on Shane and June’s bed, smoking one of their cigarettes, when the coast is clear; and, when approached by Shane in the deserted changing room, she grabs on to some social climbing by way of the rude rich boy, Christelle has a way to go. But, in a population running on empty, nothing but deep lucidity works. The lady eclipsing Marianne, in the old century, would have had room to slip. The prima ballerina therein could fool herself that a little gust of whimsy amounts to, “I’m actually happy!” Christelle, we realize, doesn’t have the luxury of not knowing how to beat the odds. There is as much metaphor as gore in this film’s disclosure. Cannibalism spreads a wide net, never more lethal than when being “inspirational.”)

Shane, seldom asleep and seldom with June—“I like you June,” is his flaming—has come to the honeymoon capital to reboot a last-ditch effort to find merit in Leo’s hapless cure for going too far. He arranges a visit to Leo’s former high watermark, where the scientist now in control rains on his millennial binge. “So as far as what he discovered, don’t make me laugh! I hope you haven’t come all this way for that nonsense…” Shane, incorrigible, latches on to a maternal colleague of the skeptic—who, were he truly bright, would not be wasting his on time, in that lab, with a daft green liquid on an endless mechanical revolution, in the service of plumbing the human sensibility—who surreptitiously arranges a meeting by which the elusive Leo can be found. (The harsh treatment [scientific advantage] spins Shane into a reverie of another embarrassing disadvantage he had endured at the hands of someone who at least would not be a fan of vaping. [Very much now being a case of choose your poison. Prior to that retreat, we see June in a black, woolen hijab.] The plunge to that painful memory involves the deflated, so-called investigator, covering himself into bed, fully clothed. As with the lab of hard knocks, the flash-back displays human brains and PhDs hoping to confirm the dynamic of consciousness there. But unlike the first critic, sneering at Leo as a feeble theoretical innovator, this apparition, and its flaming redhead boss, shows contempt to Shane, for stealing the possible revenues of Leo’s long and sad foolishness. “You like money, don’t you Shane?”/ “So what? I convinced my boss to take an interest of a Frenchman working on a shoestring budget. That’s all…” The questioner turns to his affair with Core. He, church mouse style, emotes, “Love is not the word for it.” Openly hating this little creep, she asks, “You believed the lawyers, Brown? What about betrayal? What’s your stance about betrayal, Mr. Brown?… Semenal was the game, and you knew it… Huge profits were to be made… You stole Leo’s work and wife. Now get out of here…Get out!”)

The sympathetic lab lady does show the way to Leo (Shane predictably rude). But the real gift from that transaction is another of the ladies in lab coats at the former lair of Leo wishing she could have a six-month vacation. Overhearing that impossibility, the one who fired Leo has going through his mind, and giving us a flash-back, the permanent vacation of the accident-prone mediocrity. (This extended tapestry of despair lives up to Bergman’s theatrical incisiveness.) Leo tells the power that be, “You know that I don’t ask for much. Just a favor. I need a little time. You can help me…” But getting things right may take initiative first, and then a “favor.” The response to Leo seems to corroborate that action. “It doesn’t fit!…It does not fit!” [a stupid, essentially cowardly gesture, goes nowhere but disaster].

Shane arrives in time for the auto-de-fe which Core choreographs after another kill, this time in their own abode. Leo had arrived, to stand in that conflagration, relieved, at last, from a disaster of smarts, beyond his vision, and, moreover, a failure of courage on the scale of an epidemic. (Shane, too, had arrived after the blaze had begun, where he felt necessary to both attempt to rape her, and, facing her teeth, kill her—making his getaway, as would Anna.) Two compensatory moments have been brought to bear. Although the death toll includes the odd couple and their worm-worn exterior—a grateful dead on top of a perverse career—the lovely collie dog included from out of a “glitch”-prone taxi culture our protagonist uses, puts the cold American freak to shame; as does the tapestry of blood by Core (not unlike the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat).

But, come to think of it, there’s a third lift, this time wafting into the horror from a long time ago, namely, the Alfred Hitchcock “mystery,” The Lady Vanishes (1938), also on a cusp where the planet teeters toward utter nullity. Across the way from Leo and Core’s, there are two young men presenting many surprises. The first being, that though they speak French, they are as British blokes as the British blokes in the Hitchcock film, rushing across the Continent, by train, to catch the last days of the cricket Test Match. Their crowning indiscretion is curious concupiscence about the bizarre fortress and the glimpses of Core at her upper windows’ prison. After some false starts, they breach the barricades (Leo now at work as a mild-mannered general physician, in lieu of Superman), and one of them falls prey to Core’s predilection for shock and awe. That would be the risk-taker of the pair, hungry for perhaps going viral on Twitter and Facebook. (This recalls the puerile ballerina, in Summer Interlude, after her first bout of lovemaking, claiming that the boy, far more capable of love than she, will now brag about it to his friends.) His avuncular buddy proves that he is more than a one-track mind, warning often that the break and entry should be rapidly abandoned. Eventually, this other disturbing pair of love birds leaves Core drenched in the bloke’s blood and with shards of the boy’s chin sticking on her cheeks, at which time the petrified friend retreats to the house across the street. In the Hitchcock, both cricket crazies claim that they had never noticed that there was an elderly lady, across the aisle from them, not to mention that she had now become missing. Missing links being an epidemic.

We’ll catch Shane up, in the aftermath of dragging a bloody Christelle to a less used area, as if she were a victim of the bull ring. He buys a sweet puppy, in hopes of compensating June’s being largely abandoned in the Love Capital. (On the way home, standing in the Metro, he sandwiches the little innocent between him and a woman. A young woman glares at the jerk, but glaring is all she does.) June has found the pup, and also she has located her husband, in the shower. She calls out several times, with some asperity. He ignores her calls, concerned with giving himself a much-needed clean-up, where blood overtly streams on the shower curtain. The shower eventually ends, and he’s seen in close-up, as if all is well. Pan to June, giving him a stressful look. Then close-up to him and his patented dead eyes. She again is seen, with the scab of her cut lip. “Thanks for the dog,” she says, knowing it won’t be theirs for long. He flashes a facile grin, and says, “I feel good… C’mon…” They kiss. She notices a little flow of blood coming down the shower curtain. [More Hitchcock.] “I wanna go home,” he mumbles. “OK,” she woodenly tells. And the blood-red leather gloves she’s wearing holds the disinterested creature. A muffled roar. A close-up of her eyes discloses a puzzle. Her eyes suddenly open wide. Another stream of Christelle’s blood occurs on the curtain; it might have proved embarrassing, if anyone there had cared a damn. Losing her evocative green scarf, she ends up with a Notre Dame tourist scarf with four views of Jesus.

The partnership between Denis and Tindersticks represents a unique inroad of the history of cinema. (Compare this innovation with Bergman’s standing pat with mainstream classical composition, perhaps measuring the distance from old to new). From out of the recent disc, “No Treasure but Hope,” here’s a bit of lightning readily readable. Whereas the soundtrack of “Trouble Every Day” comprises a melancholy tone poem, the tune here uses its pregnant thrum to make merry with irony and gentle love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q9MY-tQbpw

#claire denis

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maniactypewriter · 5 years ago

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the backlog week 5 [new years edition]

New year, new format. Instead of going in alphabetical order, i shall now be letting the whims of fate decide what I play. The magic dice bot on discord I used first pointed me to the T section, but then so many of the games there had some kind of issue that i decided to re roll. That led me to the W section. And thus, these five games. Keep in mind i do not have to play a lot of games, just enough to get a good enough impression of it to give my thoughts.

Waking Mars play time: 85 min

Waking Mars is a game about astronaut, botanist, and 2 time NBA champ Liang delving deep inside a Martian cave. You are accompanied by your chipper scientist friend and a quirky AI, on your quest to research the heck out of martian life. Said alien life forms are a lot like weird plants. Each room of the cave has a whole bunch of fertile spots where you can Kobe some alien seeds into. The plants will grow, and each plant will have a different effect. From my play time, there was one that healed you, one that shot wet seeds everywhere, and one that was super aggressive and stabby. A big part of the game is research. You have to examine the flora and fauna and experiment on them. You do this mostly by chucking seeds at them and seeing what happens. There is a small problem with the research window if your playing with a controller like i was. You can not easily scroll through the menus with the controller. From the 3 minutes of research ive done, I can safely say that this game came out on IOS first, and was ported to PC later. That would explain why the game prefers mouse and keyboard to gamepad. Otherwise, the game looks decent. Having a sort of hand drawn art style. The dialogue windows are a bit weird though. Liang’s big head is on the left side, while your companions show up in smaller windows to the upper right. I don't really know why they aren't the same size. Liang doesn't have many expressions aside from “determined” and “determinedly curious”

Wandersong play time: 45 minutes

Wandersong is a game about a bard on a quest to save the world. The first thing the game tells you is that you are not a hero. You are a bard. You wield song not sword. The second thing your rainbow haired spirit friend tells you is that you that the world is getting rebooted. Problem is, you live in the world and if the world reboots, you don't have anywhere to live! So off you go on a grand quest to save the world the best way you know how, with SONG! Game play is simple, left stick moves, right stick opens up a color wheel that represents different notes you can sing. A lot like one of last time’s games Aquaria. But instead of using song to move rocks and transform yourself into a war goddess, you use your song to get birds to help you and bust ghosts. The whole game revolves around the song mechanic, and it goes into more than just the notes. The game takes advantage of the fact that you are using a color wheel to select your notes. In one of my favorite puzzles from my little demo, you have to befriend a jump boost bird on the other side of a small ridge. Problem is, you can't jump over the minor bump because you'd use your bird. So you have to maneuver the song directed plant platform under you, and have it move you to the other side where you can use your jump bird to get to higher ground. Thats some nifty puzzle design right there. The game is also made to look like adorable paper cut outs and everything has the right blend of charm to make it a game worth checking out. Definitely going to keep playing this one later.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 play time: 2 hours

good ol Warhammer. The warhammer brand is so vast that you can make almost any kind of game out of some piece of warhammer fiction. Case in point, the vermintide series is Left 4 Dead, but replace zombies with rats, and put a bigger focus on melee weapons. Sure guns exist, but are you really going to use a slow firing fantasy gun when you have a massive sword in your hands you could use instead? Anyway, in vermintide 2, you can play as the same 5 dudes as you could in the last game, each one with their own unique equipment sets and special abilities.each of the 5 characters also has two unlockable alternate forms that change up the play style a bit. Meanwhile, the Scavin race has recruited the chaos faction from Warhammer lore and are wreaking havoc with double efficiency. So now you and three other real live human beings (or in some cases, bots) have to go and wreck some rat faces all over again. Players are tasked with going out and doing missions. Missions result in loot and level ups, more loot means you can take on harder missions. There are also hidden tomes in the big open levels. I never found one but apparently they can make things harder somehow, but result in better loot at the end of the level. Now, the game does have loot boxes. However, as far as i can tell you can not purchase them with real money, only earned in game. As I was writing this, I went to check a fact in the game, and after I looked, I went and did a mission. That's how you can tell a game is enjoyable.

Way of the passive fist play time 12 min

Not every game is complex enough to deserve a long play time. WotPF is a post apocalyptic style brawler. You play as the wanderer, a man who has mastered the titular way of the passive fist, a unique fighting style that involves dodging and parrying your enemies attacks and then poking them into submission once they tucker themselves out. You also have a robot arm that you can falcon punch with if you build a high enough combo so that's cool. I played this game up to the first boss where I was stumped on how to beat it so I quit. It's an interesting gimmick dressed in fancy pixel art. It's worth looking at if you're into brawlers and want a different experience.

Western Press play time 12 min

This game is also not very complex, and I am also terrible at it. Another pixel art game, set in the old west. Western press is a dueling game where two players have to hit a series of buttons on their controllers to shoot their dueling partner. And that's about it. There is online, and a single player mode… it's really simple all things considered… the duel abides. Now draw you yellow bellied varmint!

#Games #video games #Steam #way of the passive fist #western press #warhammer #warhammer vermintide 2 #wandersong #waking mars #writing #review #short writing

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a-fools-jester · 7 years ago

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Winter’s Child

@princesspeach212 I finally finished this story, sorry I took forever, my keyboard was busted. :/

Basically, Lestrade adopts Sherlock after Sherlock’s family was murdered. Except I wrote it to be autismlock, sorry if that’s not what you wanted. I didn’t intend to write it this way, just... ended up writing it this way. Trigger warning: angst, autism. Happy ending.

It didn't take Greg longer than a month to realize that the child that was now his was no ordinary child. Sherlock was quieter than most children, not exactly energetic in the usual sense, but he was a little ball of energy in other ways. He would ask question after question about this or that, and Greg needed to give a very detailed answer to sate his thirst for more knowledge. Greg liked to call him a little vacuum at times, after witnessing how the little boy seemed to just suck in all the knowledge he could get and store them in his mind.

He was a genius.

Yet there was something different about Sherlock, something a bit... off, as the women in the grocer's- far too talkative and judgmental for their own good- would say. Sherlock was smart, definitely, because no five year old child knew the periodic table by heart. No child could tell what you did in that day, analyzing you like a scientist studying a lab rat.

But there was something different about him that didn't have to do with his intellect.

Sherlock was just always in his own little world, reading his latest book- he taught himself to read somehow when Greg would let him wander around in the kids section of the library while he filled out paperwork- or maybe drawing a picture into his journal or solving a rubik's cube so he could mess it up again. Greg often tried to encourage Sherlock to interact with children his age in the hopes that it would help him be more social and step out of his shell, but Sherlock would just let his eyes glaze over the other child and after introductions, he'd return to ignoring the other child, content to be alone.

Sighing, Greg walked into Sherlock's bedroom, watching his son building something with legos that he'd probably show to him later when it was finished. "Hey, buddy." He walked over to the bed, sitting down as Sherlock continued to work. A helicopter, Greg realized, spotting the box that the pieces had come from. "Can we talk?"

"You're already talking," Sherlock responded softly, and Greg watched the back of Sherlock's head for a few seconds.

"Well, yes, I am. But I'd like a conversation where you're facing me and it's actually us talking and not me talking at you." With a sigh, Sherlock got up and sat down on the bed across from Greg, his eyes on the dark blue blanket on his bed. "Your teacher spoke to me, she said that you're not talking to the other kids." A finger twitch, no eye contact. "Sherlock will you... will you look at me?"

"What for?" the soft response, nearly a mumble, yet Sherlock's eyes, turquiose, met his for a few seconds before dropping back down.

"Your teacher is worried about you. She says you don't talk with any of the other students, you don't play during recess, she's worried that you're still affected by... what happened. Are you?"

"I was uncons-cious for all that happened, and when I woke up, I was in the hospital. I'm not tr-ematized," he clumsily used the words he'd only read in the books that he managed to pick from Greg's office. "I wasn't very close with dad number one, and mummy was always at work." There was a few seconds of silence as Greg watched the gears spinning around in Sherlock's brain. "I don't really want to play, or talk with the other kids, they're boring."

Greg knew that Sherlock was a lot better than he was before, during the first week of his stay, with the grief of his parents' loss still fresh. Sherlock, in his own little way, was broken. His eyes reflected the icy waves crashing against the deserted beach, where his mother and step-father's soul would live forever. Sometimes he still had that look in his eyes, as if he were a ghost that was stuck between two worlds, trying to find his footing even as everything spun out of control, caught in a hurricane that had him trapped in the middle.

-- "Is Mummy coming back?" Sherlock had asked two nights after the funeral, voice soft and small, eyes glued to his hands. After two days of almost silence on the topic, no tears or tantrums, no "where's mummy"'s or "I want mummy"'s, Greg had thought that Sherlock was simply too young to understand anything that was going on.

Greg pulled Sherlock into his lap, trying to find a good way to phrase it to the four year old child. "No, love, she's not."

"Why?"

Greg sighed, looking at the flame in the fireplace that made shadows dance on the walls. "Because when people die, it's permanent."

Greg caught the way Sherlock frowned, just for a second before his eyes darted up to meet Greg's. "Why do people die?"

"I don't know, Sherlock, I just know that they do. Everyone dies in the end, some sooner than others. It's just how life is, and that sucks, but it is what it is and we have to take the hand that we're dealt."

"Will you die too?" Greg- startled by the question- laughed in surprise, but it was evident by the scowl on Sherlock's face that he didn't find the situation humorous at all. The smile crumbled like dust and Greg nodded. "I don't want you to die. I'll be all alone then. I'll be bored. And I'll be hungry."

Greg laughed then, scooping Sherlock into his arms and walking them to Sherlock's bedroom. "Well, if it makes you feel better, I'm not planning on dying soon. I'm going to grow older, and older, and I'm going to watch you get married and have kids." He set Sherlock down, who smiled softly back at him. "I'm not going to leave you, kiddo, I'll always be here. I'm going to train you how to be a detective, remember?"

Sherlock grinned at the words, and Greg felt his chest melt with pride. Sherlock wanted to be a detective just like his Papa.

-- It had been roughly 6 months since Sherlock moved in with him and they had that conversation. And Sherlock- now five years old- had slowly lost the empty look in his eyes, the one that made him seem lost and afraid inside of his own home. He spoke more, he was more open to being around Greg and seemed to have gotten over his fear of losing the only adult he had left in his life as well.

Yet the teachers and other adults who came into contact with Sherlock said... things.

"I need to talk to you.... it's about Sherlock."

"He's academically well off, Mr. Lestrade, don't worry, but-"

"-doesn't speak to others very often-"

"-reads people like books-"

"-always in his own world, that one-"

"-needs to learn to be more social-"

"-doesn't know how to interact with others properly-"

"-he might need extra help."

Yet when asked about what exactly was wrong with his child, there was never a straight answer they could provide. They would stammer and shift their eyes, exchange looks that Greg couldn't decipher for the life of him and he just wanted a damn answer. He wanted to know why everyone seemed to think there was something broken in his son, who probably surpassed all of their IQ's. Sherlock seemed to be able to tell things about other people, observant in a way that nobody, not even adults, were capable of being.

There was an answer to his question though, one that was slowly creeping in at the edges of his mind, one he wasn't sure if he wanted or could bear to receive. He knew, on some level, there was something different about Sherlock, but every time he heard that one word, he felt like he was stuck in the middle of a free-fall.

"Are you happy in school?" Greg asked.

Sherlock shrugged, his fingers tapping away on his thigh in what may or may not have been the newest violin piece he was learning. Vivaldi. "I like learning, but I don't like the other kids."

"Why? Are they bullying you?" A small shake of the head. "You can tell me anything, I won't get mad."

Sherlock paused, thinking over what to say, before let out a loud breath. "I don't know why, but I don't like them, they're... loud and messy and dull." He picked at the scab on his arm he got from the coffee table and Greg hastily grabbed his hand, knowing that Sherlock would never let it heal if he was left to his own devices. "There's nothing wrong with me," Sherlock said, "I hear what the teachers and people say. They think I'm a freak."

"Where did you hear that word?" Greg asked softly in spite of the burning anger in his throat. After he'd found his own son unconscious and covered in blood from being hit with a blunt instrument with both of his parents murdered, Greg had a right to be overprotective and slightly paranoid. He worked as a cop, he'd seen hundreds of children hurt (or worse) but when he saw his son on the floor, his parents dead in the room next to his, he nearly gagged.

"A kid on the playground. Sebastian. Said I'm a freak, I don't really know what I did. His parents are divorcing though, so I guess that could be why he's angry with everything."

Greg nodded, deciding to ignore Sherlock's deduction for now. "Well, did you try to make friends with the other kids? All you have to do is try, just say your name and ask if you could join them. Try to fit in a bit more, maybe?"

-- So they went on like that, in much the same way as they went on before for another two weeks before Greg was called into the headmaster's office, with Sherlock outside, curled up into himself. "You called for me, ma'am?" he asked politely, in spite of the fact that he was at work when he got the call and Donovan had given him a knowing look. She'd been one of the first people to point out that there was something else going on, and although Greg knew it was with good intentions, he couldn't help but get offended.

"Yes, sir. I... spoke with William's family doctor, and I went through the files... are you aware that his older brother was... neurodivergent?" she asked, getting right to the point as she read something from the files on her desk.

Greg felt his stomach drop, chest beginning to ache, feeling the tendrils of fear and doubt creep back in like they usually did whenever this one forbidden topic was brought up. "No, I didn't... why? Listen, I was at work when you called, and I'd really like to just get back. How is this relevant? Why did you call me in?" he asked, beginning to grow frustrated at this entire situation.

The woman across from him- Ms. Norton- merely gave him a sympathetic smile, used to dealing with irate parents on a day-to-day basis just as Greg was used to dealing with corpses and receiving pictures of gory crime scenes in the middle of the dinner. What's your job, Papa? Can I help?

"Well, we have noticed that your child is having troubles with socializing with other children, and as well as showing some other atypical behavior for children his age, so I called you in to tell you face-to-face that I believe an appointment with a doctor is in order to help him be the best he can be. I've already-" Greg stopped listening after that, his head spinning.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

"There's something funny about William, isn't there?"

"He's just grieving."

"An odd child if I've ever seen one."

"He's a genius, could probably do the job of Scotland Yard for them once he's old enough. Even Einstein was a bit odd, if I remember correctly."

"He's a bit off, Greg. You should have him te-"

"Just shut the fuck up, Phil. There's nothing wrong with my son."

Except there was, now that someone was forcing him to look, there was something there that moved behind his son's eyes. And no matter how hard he wanted to close his eyes to keep from seeing it, he couldn't close his heart to keep from grieving it. Mourning the loss of his perfect, genius son. It was ridiculous, but here he was anyway, fucking doubled over in the office of Sherlock's headmaster. He felt a hand touch his shoulder, and looked up to meet Sherlock's eyes. Sherlock, who was perfectly calm, perfectly collected, almost serene as he stared into Greg's eyes intensely.

"I'm still me, Papa," he said with his eyes squinted, uncertainty written on his face, insecure about his words when he shouldn't have to be. Greg, unable to keep looking at Sherlock's face when he was so nervous and confused, pulled the little boy into his arms, burying his face into Sherlock's curls.

He breathed deeply, calming his pounding heart. "If at any point you want to back out of this, just tell me and we'll stop going, okay? It's just a test, but there's no right or wrong answers. You just be yourself, okay?" Sherlock nodded, and Greg closed his eyes, trying to steel his nerves.

-- Sherlock was on the spectrum, Dr. Baynes told him, but had the IQ of a genius. After countless months waiting for a confirmation or denial of the fact, Greg had gotten somewhat used to the idea. The diagnostic process was tiring, painful, and often led to heartache and frustration, but at least now Greg had a name for it. He knew what Sherlock struggled with and how to make things easier on the lad.

Sherlock was 6 years old now, at the top of his classes, and attended a school that was perfect for him, free of nasty little boys and girls that called him a freak or a psychopath (which some weird kid in the fifth grade decided to call him once). He was a gifted child, called twice exceptional because he was both academically blessed but very challenged.

Greg realized that a diagnosis, no matter how much he'd been taught throughout his life was worse than a terminal sickness, didn't change his son. It didn't make Sherlock anything other than Sherlock, it just described him. It was an explanation of Sherlock's quirks rather than a way of saying that Greg didn't know how to parent. It wasn't a personal flaw, Greg learned, it was something written in Sherlock's DNA. And that was okay.

There were hard times, yes, like when he tried to take Sherlock to the restaurant during lunch hour and everything was too loud for Sherlock and they had to leave. Greg resolutely ignored the questioning looks, the pitying voices, the confused murmurs of the older patrons. And there were times when Greg was at the end of his rope and just wanted to cry alongside Sherlock, because he wanted to make it better but couldn't. Something inside of his bled and continued to bleed every time he saw the self inflicted wounds on Sherlock's skin after his melt downs.

But the winter was over, spring was coming, and they still had a long way to go.

Sherlock had almost mastered the piece he'd spent countless days learning to play on the violin, the one by Vivaldi. It was called Four Seasons, and a piece was written for each of them. Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring. Sherlock was still working on Spring, he still had to memorize the finger placements and the right timing for it. But it was coming along, and Greg found that Spring was his favorite.

Spring was coming soon. Greg could feel it.

The night was ending, and Greg could feel the first traces of dawn. It was okay, everything would be okay, Greg was certain of it, because nothing had changed. Sherlock was still his little detective who could know weird things about peoples lives with a look, a boy who needed to be sung to at night so he could fall asleep, he was still the same kid who obsessed over bees and murderers. Greg wouldn't want him any other way.

http://archiveofourown.org/works/11319126 that’s it on AO3. @princesspeach212 gave me the prompt, I added the autism which nobody asked for. Sorry this was shit.

#greg lestrade #papa lestrade #papa greg lestrade #winter's child #sherlock holmes #kidlock #autstic sherlock #autistic characters #my fic #my story #my stuff #andrew's stuff #sorry i made this

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kaedekayano · 8 years ago

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uhh for that drabble prompt thing #80 and shirokoro if you Want,

ooh yeah sure B) thanks for waiting!!

80: “How can you think I’m anything but hopelessly in love with you?”

Work was tiring. There was always an endless shuffle of paperwork, too many headache-inducing computer screens, and more negotiation with ignorant government officials whose only scientific knowledge was “The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” than Yanagisawa ever wanted to deal with again. The stupid guinea pig didn’t help, either.

Now would be an especially good example of work was tiring. Yanagisawa had been working for forty-eight hours straight. He’d caught a quick 15 minutes of sleep on the bus, but it’d been light and restless as the bus rolled across every bump and crack in the road. At this point, he was considering demanding government subsidisations to pay for caffeine pills. The only other person in the room was his assistant, who was hunched over a clipboard, taking notes.

“Any updates?” he asked, peering down at the cell where his guinea pig was sleeping. The lights were always on — like he would be stupid enough to leave his subject alone to plot in the darkness — but they were dimmed a bit. Guinea pig’s vitals indicated that he was sleeping far more soundly than Yanagisawa was.

“Nothing.”

The only reason everyone had been here for so long was because the rat on the moon was estimated to die in less than half an hour. They’d all been on edge for the last week. Reports said results could vary from enormous explosions to nothing at all.

The guinea pig stirred briefly in his sleep. Yanagisawa checked the time. 3 AM.

Might as well wake him up. His assistant certainly wouldn’t offer anything interesting, and Aguri was at home; she was hardly going to be of help now.

Yanagisawa hit a button, setting off strident alarm bells in the guinea pig’s cell. “Wake-up time,” he said into the intercom.

The guinea pig yawned, stretching out on the table as his limbs were freed from their restraints. A brief flicker of irritation on his face appeared before it was replaced by a lazy smirk aimed directly at the camera. Yanagisawa could swear that every time he saw that smirk, his blood pressure climbed progressively higher.

“So what are we doing today?” his subject inquired, sitting up on the table. “Electrocution? Dismemberment?”

“No,” Yanagisawa said curtly, then paused and added, “That’s tomorrow.”

“Seems like you’re getting soft,” the subject drawled. “Could you possibly be growing a conscience?”

“Like you’d know anything about having a conscience.”

“You’d be surprised.” He stretched out his arms, still making eye contact with the camera. Where the hell did an assassin learn how to do that? “I can be surprisingly compassionate, you know.”

“You’re a mass murderer,” the scientist replied with cold dismissal. He shouldn’t even be having this conversation. “I don’t think you’re one to talk.”

“No? I wasn’t always a mass murderer. I did have a heart once.” The assassin shrugged. “What about you? What does your heart belong to — science?”

Yanagisawa’s heart, which was currently busy pumping far too much caffeine into his veins, gave a startled little thump at the question. “Myself.”

“Hm. I bet I could change your mind.”

Idiot guinea pig, always flirting with him. Yanagisawa scowled, even though he couldn’t see it. Like he could just flirt his way to freedom. “Don’t count on it.”

“I think I can.” Guinea pig cocked his head. “So if it’s 3 AM, why are you here? I thought you would leave all the grunt work to Aguri so you can go do more important things.”

“You are my most important project. As shocking as it may be, you’re my responsibility.” By order of the brainless government officials who didn’t know the difference between the cell wall and the cell membrane, anyway.

“Your responsibility?” He pouted. “I don’t think you’ve been taking very good care of me.”

“I don’t have to. You should be happy I’m keeping you alive. Without me, you’d almost certainly have gone to court and received the death penalty.”

He grinned. “Why, does the thought bother you?”

Yanagisawa shouldn’t be talking to his subject, let lone be experiencing this odd heat in his cheeks. It was the sleep deprivation for sure. It must be messing up his prefrontal cortex, causing social disinhibition. “You make my life more convenient by acting as a subject for me to experiment on, and nothing more. I’ll still enjoy electrocuting you tomorrow.”

“Aww. I hate it when you do that, you know.”

“I don’t care whether you hate me or not,” Yanagisawa said coolly. “We’re going ahead with the operations anyway.”

“But I don’t hate you,” the guinea pig said in singsongy tones, his eyes bright with humour. “How could you think I’m anything but hopelessly in love with you?”

Yanagisawa flushed and hit mute on the intercom, a pronounced crackle of static announcing the cutoff of communication. Below in the cell, the subject pouted up at him, but there was no sound. Stupid guinea pig. “Are there any updates on the rat now?”

“Its vitals are degenerating. We’ll be getting results soon.” The assistant was too professional to comment on Yanagisawa’s interactions with his subject.

Yanagisawa returned to watching the guinea pig walk back and forth in his cell. His subject chewed on his lip, his expression one of contemplation, but he wouldn’t be finding any answers there. There was nothing but the table, the barrier that usually separated him from Aguri, and the white walls.

The scientist’s focus was broken by the abrupt sound of his assistant tapping against the keyboard. He turned to look at her.

“Sir,” she said, her face paling as she stared at the computer screen. “The results are coming in, and they—“

The end of her sentence was cut off by an ominous boom from above them. Yanagisawa almost lost his balance as the ground shook with tremors. Below in the cell, his guinea pig stumbled into the wall, staring up at the camera with wide eyes — the only crack in his composure.

“The rat’s death caused an explosion,” the assistant said, typing frantically. “A large one. A huge portion of the moon is gone or in ruins.”

Yanagisawa looked out the window. At such a late hour, the full moon had been hanging in the nighttime sky, glinting brightly in the darkness. Slowly but surely, it began to crumble before his eyes.

“They’re recommending that we terminate the experiment right away,” she said, her fingers pausing on the keyboard. “Sir, we need to destroy the test subject.”

#shiroyanagisawa #ask #ac #fic #shirokoro #yanagisawa #korosensei #i die near the end of every drabble im sorry #their banter is fun to write tho!

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neptunecreek · 5 years ago

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EFF's 2019 Pioneer Awards Winner Remarks and Speeches

EFF’s annual Pioneer Awards ceremony celebrates individuals and groups who have made outstanding contributions to freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. On Sept. 12, EFF welcomed keynote speaker Adam Savage, who spoke on the importance of storytelling, scientific exploration, and personal discovery. And each of our honorees had important messages to share with us: legendary science fiction author William Gibson reminded us how early science fiction shaped the world we live in now; the inspiring anti-surveillance group Oakland Privacy showed how we can stand together to make lasting differences in how technology is used in our communities today; and trailblazing tech scholar danah boyd challenged everyone in the tech world to shape a better future.

Opening the ceremony was EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn, who framed the evening by reminding us that we must articulate what that better future looks like and work to make it happen—because "honestly, we don’t have any other choice." Additionally, she underscored how important it is to recognize our past and move toward a better future. "Even now, especially now, we need hope," she said. "In the end, we cannot build a better world unless we envision it and talk about it."

Below are transcripts or prepared remarks of the keynote and award winners' speeches. Audio of the entire ceremony is available here, and individual audio recordings of each speech are below.

Opening Remarks by Cindy Cohn

Audio

Thank you so much, Aaron. I am just delighted to see everyone here tonight and to honor these amazing people. Tonight we take a moment to celebrate our community.

But as we begin I want to send a moment out for our friend Chelsea Manning, who is again incarcerated by a vindictive government. Our hearts go out to her and we wish she could be with us here tonight.

On to our awardees. Each of them will have an individual introduction, but I think tonight’s awardees represent a great cross-section of the work that is being done to make our digital world better.

Executive Director Cindy Cohn delivers the opening remarks

First, there’s Dr. danah boyd, who has spent her professional life trying to figure out and reflect back to us the ways in which people, especially young people, are interacting with technologies. That would be enough, but danah has now gone far beyond that to both support and inspire other researchers and build a community thinking about how Data and Society do and should interact.

Second, there’s Oakland Privacy, who represent what a supporting, inspiring, grassroots community can accomplish – putting the city of Oakland far ahead of the national conversation on these issues.

And finally William Gibson, whose imagination and storytelling have framed our digital world, with both its benefits and its perils. William pioneered the vision that we needed, and he did so before EFF and these awards even existed

We gather tonight in a time of reckoning and change for our community. It’s one where we desperately need to articulate and push for a better technical world because so many people have lost hope: unable to think of the future as anything but a dystopian hellscape, even as they feel trapped behind their phones or their keyboards.

Outside our world, the blush of tech-excitement has given way to a tech-lash that is needed. If not conducted thoughtfully, however, this moment threatens those who most need digital tools to keep themselves safe. It threatens those who have used and are using the Net to find community, support, and solidarity, and join together to find and implement solutions to many, many problems we see pressing against us all. Politicians of all stripes are angry at those big, brand name tech companies, powerful and unaccountable, but for very different and often sharply contradictory reasons. But as they shoot at Big Tech, we know that the public interest Internet, the marginal voices it has empowered and the innovators that could challenge and reform the current status quo, all sit nearby and stand a great risk of becoming collateral damage. We must not let that happen.

So far, we’ve seen that many of the efforts to combat the problems of big tech actually threaten to empower and ossify it. I shed no tears for the big companies, who join John Perry’s weary giants of Flesh and Steel as the unwelcome would-be governors of cyberspace. But if we want to move toward an Internet that works for us, where power is shifted to the users and builders and away from the Wall Street financiers and surveillance capitalists who would turn us into insecure, surveilled rats in a maze, we must step up now more than ever.

But there’s a reckoning inside our world too. Recent events have demonstrated the need to take a hard look the shift from technology being a niche issue led by quirky geeks and outcasts to one of big business, with the attendant money and power and corruption. We also need to look at the frankly horrible treatment that some in tech have wrought: from young girls to aspiring women scientists and technologists to contract and gig workers to people of color both in the U.S. and around the world. We must address our roles and own blind spots in letting this happen to so many. We must address the ways in which our embrace of the hero-narrative, and a hunger for the fruits of innovation, allowed a world in which being a genius made it OK to be an asshole, or much worse. Those days must be over now, and I say good riddance.

But this shift requires work by all of us who believe that technology can be a force for good in the world. It won’t happen automatically and the decisions along the way are not simple. We must do it together. We must stand with the survivors and ensure that, as we do so, we work to bring people of good will and good intentions along with us.

Barlow said, echoing Alan Kay, that the way to make a better future is to invent it. And it’s true. But as recent events have unfolded, I think that even he would likely have had to reconsider some of his own role in creating some parts of this world. But I also know that Barlow would have wanted the unvarnished truth, and was always hopeful we would find ways to discover it, and that ultimately that truth would help bring us to a better place.

Even now when the tools we built to help us see have given us the clarity to uncover the very worst. When we’ve built systems that let everyone speak, we must accept that those new channels will be filled with the voices of those who have long been silenced, who speak their truth and make us confront their pain. We also know that they are filled with those who want to keep them silenced.

Even now, especially now, we need hope. In the end, we cannot build a better world unless we envision it and talk about it. Being here with all of you tonight renews my faith that there are so many good, smart, thoughtful and kind people in this community. And we know that there are many more of us out there, outside our community, waiting to come in. We must revel in each other and not let the awful things we’ve heard and seen make us turn away from the truth, or each other.

So that’s my challenge to all of you tonight. Even as we’re unflinching in talking about and addressing the problems and harms that our current world has created or encouraged or even just rides alongside, we must also articulate what a better future looks like and work to make it happen. Honestly, we don’t have any other choice.

Now, on to the celebration part of the evening.

Keynote Speech by Adam Savage

Audio

I want to start by thanking EFF for asking me to be here and deliver this keynote. I've been a supporter and true believer in your mission since its inception. I was lucky enough to be at your 20th birthday party and party with John Perry Barlow, whose long-distance vision of the promise and perils of the Internet was prescient, to say the least.

I'm humbled to be in the room with tonight's award winners, each heroes in their own right. Specifically, Mr. Gibson, if you knew how much your books meant to my early days in San Francisco, they equate to me at 24 first coming here in 1990 and the city that I found when I moved here. And so I want to thank you personally for all the time I've spent and the realities that you have weaved.

I wanted to talk tonight about facts and stories. I've had a lot of different jobs and even careers in my life so far. Even in hosting MythBusters for 14 years on Discovery Channel, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what that job actually was.

Adam Savage delivers the keynote to the 2019 Pioneer Awards

In the first season, newly divorced and going through the particular insanity that befalls all of the recently divorced, three months into filming, I stopped dating entirely just to hunker down and figure out what this new endeavor of hosting a TV show was asking from me, what I had to contribute to it. And the answer would take me more than a decade. At first, I thought I was there to build stuff and talk about it. And then I realized maybe my job is to concoct entertaining scientific methodologies and execute them and talk about them. And then I thought it was to make something explode in every episode. That may have come from a note from the network. In 2006, I met Neil deGrasse Tyson for the first time and did his podcast, and I was sitting across from him, watching him go, and thinking, "Look at this guy. He is like an arrow pointed towards a goal of illuminating science for people." To use a phrase from Mr. Gibson, "He is vat-grown for this job." He is a science communicator. What a great mission. Wait a minute. I'm a science communicator. What a cool mission. Albeit, I'm a science communicator with only a high school diploma.

In 2008, we filmed an episode called Lead Balloon in which we made a 14-foot diameter balloon out of 28 pounds of rolled lead. No explosions. No fire. And when we talked to editorial about this episode, they expected that the cut for the lead balloon portion of the episode would maybe be 15 minutes. The first rough cut of Lead Balloon was 55 minutes long. The final cut was so thrilling and rated really well.

And I realized that one of the key things that made this episode great was Jamie's and my enthusiasm. If we were engaged, it turns out, so was the audience. And that's when I started wearing more costumes on the show, and it's when Jamie started asking questions that had no myth at all attached to them, like, "Well, if you could put square wheels on a car, how fast would you have to go to get a smooth ride?"

It took us two tries. The first try, all four of the brakes fell off the car at the same time, an injury I would have trouble doing if you asked me to do it on purpose. On the second try, the answer was 38 miles an hour.

It wasn't until season 11 that I realized the simplicity of my job. Storytelling. We were there to tell a story about the search for a hidden truth, to quote Raymond Chandler. Often, a hidden truth in something absurd. That, in fact, it turns out, was all I had ever done for a living.

When I spent several years as a graphic designer, and every designer will tell you this, the final design works not because it has the proper information, but because that information tells a story to the person who's looking at it. Your eye is guided to the right parts of the design at the right time. Instead of using time to tell a story like in a movie, a graphic designer uses space to parcel out the information so our brains can process it.

When I was working as a model maker in commercials and films, making spaceships, attaching little details to a ship, we called them greebles. Every single greeble has to have a story attached to it, and that story has to be known by the model maker gluing that greeble to that ship. Otherwise, it won't work aesthetically, because the surface details on the Millennium Falcon tell a very different story than the surface details on the Enterprise. The model maker is required to know that story. Otherwise, the story won't scan.

And on MythBusters, the story was one of scientific discovery but of also personal discovery. It was about watching Jamie and Kari, Tory, Grant, and I, and Jessi, and the entire team confront new ideas and new materials, and collaborating and learning what they can do, and seeing what we can learn from them.

Stories are what make us human. I think that we invented language in order to tell stories. I think the story is the first mover. We don't prioritize stories enough culturally, in my opinion. Every one of us has been annoyed by the self-proclaimed science geek who simply spits out facts they found on Reddit that day. It is an easy mistake to make, because we are trained in school to think like this. Fields like math and science and geography are most often taught in public schools as monolithic groups of facts to memorize by the test next Tuesday.

And when you make people memorize endless math tables or state capitals or the freezing point of elements, you lead them to believe a terrible thing, that facts equal knowledge. But they don't. Knowledge comes from taking facts and putting them in a context with each other. That context is narrative.

I have a great example. My high school freshman earth science teacher, Dan Frare, was telling us about glaciers, and he was trying to explain the features you saw in glaciers as they were moving. And he was trying to explain how slowly they moved. And he said to us, "The best way to picture a glacier is it's a river on Quaaludes." It was the '80s.

In fact, it was so long ago, I would go to Dan Frare's class at lunchtime, because I didn't have any friends. And I would pepper him with questions about science, and he would sit there and chain smoke in school while grading papers. This is a different time. Wait a second. Where was I? Quaaludes. Yes.

This is a beautiful way to talk about glaciers because it actually gave me a deep understanding of the physics of a glacier in one sentence. He took facts, and he put them in a story and gave my brain that story for the rest of my life.

Having told stories in the service of both art and science, I feel uniquely qualified—and you should know, I feel uniquely qualified for very few things—I feel uniquely qualified to tell you that I've come to understand that far from being at either end of a spectrum of human experience, people often say, "Oh, it's both an art and a science." And what we do when we say that is we place those things in opposition to each other and at a distance from each other.

And what I have come to understand is that science and art are simply both ways of telling stories, and for the same reason. We use these stories to figure out the shape of the universe around us. I'm telling you all of this to talk about what I see as the two important missions that the EFF has been fulfilling throughout its tenure. One is, of course, the legal and logistical aspect of their job. Fighting in court, writing amicus briefs, and tirelessly using the tools available to them to help all of us enjoy a safer Internet with proper privacy, autonomy, and genuine dignity.

But in addition, in order to wake up the public to the realities of the problem, it's not enough to recount just the facts, ma'am. We have to make compelling arguments for why we need privacy and safe spaces as well as free speech and openness. And in addition to the legal vanguard it occupies, EFF is also always working to help people understand what they are fighting for and how the issues affect them.

In order to understand the thing, we need to see our place in and adjacent to it. And this is arguably the most difficult part of their job. Tonight's award winners are here for the fight, and just as much, they are here for the stories, because it is a universal human truth that when we share and listen to each other's stories, the world moves forward in a positive way.

We are living through a difficult and critical time. I now truly understand the meaning of the famous curse, "May you live in interesting times." And I am genuinely not sure that we're going to make it out of this. It is the central fact of my current and probably all of our current existence.

But if we make it out, and I believe this with my whole heart, if we do make it out, it'll be because we have listened to each other's stories and connected with realities different than ours, than the ones we might occupy, and we have worked hard to let all of those stories be told. I hope we do. Thank you so much to EFF, and thank you for your time.

Acceptance Speech by danah boyd — "Facing the Great Reckoning Head-On"

Audio

I cannot begin to express how honored I am to receive this award. My awe of the Electronic Frontier Foundation dates back to my teenage years. EFF has always inspired me to think deeply about what values should shape the internet. And so I want to talk about values tonight, and what happens when those values are lost, or violated, as we have seen recently in our industry and institutions.

But before I begin, I would like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence out of respect to all of those who have been raped, trafficked, harassed, and abused. For those of you who have been there, take this moment to breathe. For those who haven’t, take a moment to reflect on how the work that you do has enabled the harm of others, even when you never meant to.

The story of how I got to be standing here is rife with pain and I need to expose part of my story in order to make visible why we need to have a Great Reckoning in the tech industry. This award may be about me, but it’s also not. It should be about all of the women and other minorities who have been excluded from tech by people who thought they were helping.

The first blog post I ever wrote was about my own sexual assault. It was 1997 and my audience was two people. I didn’t even know what I was doing would be called blogging. Years later, when many more people started reading my blog, I erased many of those early blog posts because I didn’t want strangers to have to respond to those vulnerable posts. I obfuscated my history to make others more comfortable.

I was at the MIT Media Lab from 1999–2002. At the incoming student orientation dinner, an older faculty member sat down next to me. He looked at me and asked if love existed. I raised my eyebrow as he talked about how love was a mirage, but that sex and pleasure were real. That was my introduction to Marvin Minsky and to my new institutional home.

My time at the Media Lab was full of contradictions. I have so many positive memories of people and conversations. I can close my eyes and flash back to laughter and late night conversations. But my time there was also excruciating. I couldn’t afford my rent and did some things that still bother me in order to make it all work. I grew numb to the worst parts of the Demo or Die culture. I witnessed so much harassment, so much bullying that it all started to feel normal. Senior leaders told me that “students need to learn their place” and that “we don’t pay you to read, we don’t pay you to think, we pay you to do.” The final straw for me was when I was pressured to work with the Department of Defense to track terrorists in 2002.

After leaving the Lab, I channeled my energy into V-Day, an organization best known for producing “The Vagina Monologues,” but whose daily work is focused on ending violence against women and girls. I found solace in helping build online networks of feminists who were trying to help combat sexual assault and a culture of abuse. To this day, I work on issues like trafficking and combating the distribution of images depicting the commercial sexual abuse of minors on social media.

By 2003, I was in San Francisco, where I started meeting tech luminaries, people I had admired so deeply from afar. One told me that I was “kinda smart for a chick.” Others propositioned me. But some were really kind and supportive. Joi Ito became a dear friend and mentor. He was that guy who made sure I got home OK. He was also that guy who took being called-in seriously, changing his behavior in profound ways when I challenged him to reflect on the cost of his actions. That made me deeply respect him.

I also met John Perry Barlow around the same time. We became good friends and spent lots of time together. Here was another tech luminary who had my back when I needed him to. A few years later, he asked me to forgive a friend of his, a friend whose sexual predation I had witnessed first hand. He told me it was in the past and he wanted everyone to get along. I refused, unable to convey to him just how much his ask hurt me. Our relationship frayed and we only talked a few times in the last few years of his life.

So here we are… I’m receiving this award, named after Barlow less than a week after Joi resigned from an institution that nearly destroyed me after he socialized with and took money from a known pedophile. Let me be clear — this is deeply destabilizing for me. I am here today in-no-small-part because I benefited from the generosity of men who tolerated and, in effect, enabled unethical, immoral, and criminal men. And because of that privilege, I managed to keep moving forward even as the collateral damage of patriarchy stifled the voices of so many others around me. I am angry and sad, horrified and disturbed because I know all too well that this world is not meritocratic. I am also complicit in helping uphold these systems.

What’s happening at the Media Lab right now is emblematic of a broader set of issues plaguing the tech industry and society more generally. Tech prides itself in being better than other sectors. But often it’s not. As an employee of Google in 2004, I watched my male colleagues ogle women coming to the cafeteria in our building from the second floor, making lewd comments. When I first visited TheFacebook in Palo Alto, I was greeted by a hyper-sexualized mural and a knowing look from the admin, one of the only women around. So many small moments seared into my brain, building up to a story of normalized misogyny. Fast forward fifteen years and there are countless stories of executive misconduct and purposeful suppression of the voices of women and sooooo many others whose bodies and experiences exclude them from the powerful elite. These are the toxic logics that have infested the tech industry. And, as an industry obsessed with scale, these are the toxic logics that the tech industry has amplified and normalized. The human costs of these logics continue to grow. Why are we tolerating sexual predators and sexual harassers in our industry? That’s not what inclusion means.

I am here today because I learned how to survive and thrive in a man’s world, to use my tongue wisely, watch my back, and dodge bullets. I am being honored because I figured out how to remove a few bricks in those fortified walls so that others could look in. But this isn’t enough.

I am grateful to EFF for this honor, but there are so many underrepresented and under-acknowledged voices out there trying to be heard who have been silenced. And they need to be here tonight and they need to be at tech’s tables. Around the world, they are asking for those in Silicon Valley to take their moral responsibilities seriously. They are asking everyone in the tech sector to take stock of their own complicity in what is unfolding and actively invite others in.

And so, if my recognition means anything, I need it to be a call to arms. We need to all stand up together and challenge the status quo. The tech industry must start to face The Great Reckoning head-on. My experiences are all-too common for women and other marginalized peoples in tech. And it it also all too common for well-meaning guys to do shitty things that make it worse for those that they believe they’re trying to support.

If change is going to happen, values and ethics need to have a seat in the boardroom. Corporate governance goes beyond protecting the interests of capitalism. Change also means that the ideas and concerns of all people need to be a part of the design phase and the auditing of systems, even if this slows down the process. We need to bring back and reinvigorate the profession of quality assurance so that products are not launched without systematic consideration of the harms that might occur. Call it security or call it safety, but it requires focusing on inclusion. After all, whether we like it or not, the tech industry is now in the business of global governance.

“Move fast and break things” is an abomination if your goal is to create a healthy society. Taking short-cuts may be financially profitable in the short-term, but the cost to society is too great to be justified. In a healthy society, we accommodate differently-abled people through accessibility standards, not because it’s financially prudent but because it’s the right thing to do. In a healthy society, we make certain that the vulnerable amongst us are not harassed into silence because that is not the value behind free speech. In a healthy society, we strategically design to increase social cohesion because binaries are machine logic not human logic.

The Great Reckoning is in front of us. How we respond to the calls for justice will shape the future of technology and society. We must hold accountable all who perpetuate, amplify, and enable hate, harm, and cruelty. But accountability without transformation is simply spectacle. We owe it to ourselves and to all of those who have been hurt to focus on the root of the problem. We also owe it to them to actively seek to not build certain technologies because the human cost is too great.

My ask of you is to honor me and my story by stepping back and reckoning with your own contributions to the current state of affairs. No one in tech — not you, not me — is an innocent bystander. We have all enabled this current state of affairs in one way or another. Thus, it is our responsibility to take action. How can you personally amplify underrepresented voices? How can you intentionally take time to listen to those who have been injured and understand their perspective? How can you personally stand up to injustice so that structural inequities aren’t further calcified? The goal shouldn’t be to avoid being evil; it should be to actively do good. But it’s not enough to say that we’re going to do good; we need to collectively define — and hold each other to — shared values and standards.

People can change. Institutions can change. But doing so requires all who harmed — and all who benefited from harm — to come forward, admit their mistakes, and actively take steps to change the power dynamics. It requires everyone to hold each other accountable, but also to aim for reconciliation not simply retribution. So as we leave here tonight, let’s stop designing the technologies envisioned in dystopian novels. We need to heed the warnings of artists, not race head-on into their nightmares. Let’s focus on hearing the voices and experiences of those who have been harmed because of the technologies that made this industry so powerful. And let’s collaborate with and design alongside those communities to fix these wrongs, to build just and empowering technologies rather than those that reify the status quo.

Many of us are aghast to learn that a pedophile had this much influence in tech, science, and academia, but so many more people face the personal and professional harm of exclusion, the emotional burden of never-ending subtle misogyny, the exhaustion from dodging daggers, and the nagging feeling that you’re going crazy as you try to get through each day. Let’s change the norms. Please help me.

Thank you.

Acceptance Speech by Oakland Privacy

Audio

Mike Katz-Lacabe: So I first have to confess I'm not just a member of the EFF. I'm also a client. Thank you to Mitch Stoltz and your team for making sure that public records that I unearth remain available on the Internet for others to see.

So as Nash said, Oakland Privacy's strength comes not just from the citizens that volunteer as part of its group, but also from the coalitions that we build. And certainly every victory that is credited to us is the result of many, many other coalition members, whether in some cases it's the EFF or the ACLU or local neighborhood activists. It's really a coalition of people that makes us stronger and helps us get the things done that sometimes we not always deservedly get as much credit for. So I want to make sure to call out those other groups and to recognize that their work is important as well and critical for us.

EFF's nash presents a 2019 Barlow Award to members of Oakland Privacy

My work for Oakland Privacy comes from the belief that only from transparency can you have oversight, and from oversight derives accountability. So many examples of technology that have been acquired and used by law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area were never known about by the city councils that oversaw those police agencies.

In the city of Oakland, it was seven years after the city of Oakland acquired its stingray cell site simulator that the city of Oakland and the city council became aware of the use of that device by the police. In my city, I live in San Leandro, it was five years before the city council became aware of our city's use of license plate readers and a very notorious photo of me getting out of my car that was taken by a passing license plate reader got published on the Internet.

We do our best work when working together. That's been said. Let me give you ... speaking of stories, I'll take take off from Adam's talk here. For example, recently journalist Caroline Haskins obtained a bunch of documents pertaining to Ring, you may know the Ring doorbell, and its relationship with police departments. A post about a party that Ring held at the International Association of Chiefs of Police meeting with basketball player Shaquille O'Neal, where each attendee got five free Ring doorbells. That was highlighted by EFF Senior Investigative Researcher Dave Maass.

I, or we as Oakland Privacy, we then found a social media post by the police chief of Dunwoody, Georgia saying, "Hey, look at this great party with Ring, and there's Shaq." Dave then went and took that information, went back and looked at Dunwoody and found that subsequently, a few months later, Dunwoody was proud to announce the first law enforcement partnership with Ring in the state of Georgia. What a coincidence.

Oftentimes it's these coalitions working together that result in prying public records free and then establishing the context around them. The work we do involves very, very exciting things: Public records requests, lobbying of public officials and meeting with public officials, speaking at city council meetings and board of supervisors meetings. We're talking, this is, primo excitement here.

So, as was mentioned, our work with Oakland Privacy was helpful in getting the first privacy advisory commission, an actual city of Oakland commission going, within the city of Oakland. It's this organization, led by chair Brian Hofer, that passes policies regarding surveillance technologies, and not only passes policies but actually digs down and finds out what surveillance technologies the city of Oakland has. It has been a model for cities and counties, and we're proud that our work will continue there in addition to working on many other issues surrounding surveillance.

In fact, I would be very happy to tell you that we've had ... just recently the California assembly and the Senate passed a ban on the use of face surveillance on body-worn cameras. Again, our work with coalitions there makes the difference. And now, I would like to introduce another member of Oakland Privacy, Tracy Rosenberg. Tracy Rosenberg: Thank you, Mike, and hi, everyone, and thank you so much for this wonderful award. We are honored. We're splitting up the speaking here because Oakland Privacy is a coalition and is a collective, and that's important to us. We have no hierarchy after all these years, and I've been doing this for five years. All that I get to call myself is a member. That's all I am.

I want to highlight, there are people in the audience that are not coming up on stage. J.P. Massar, Don Fogg, Leah Young. There are people that are not here whose names I won't mention since they're not here, but it's always a coalition effort.

And this week I've been jumping up and down because the broader coalition that includes EFF and Consumer Reports and ACLU and a bunch of other people, we just stood down the Chamber of Commerce, the tech industry, and pretty much every business in California in order to keep the Consumer Privacy Act intact.

There were six people on a whole bunch of conference calls, you don't want to know how many, and somehow we actually did it. It's official as of today. There is power in coalition work.

I'm incredibly grateful to Oakland Privacy because I was incredibly upset about the encroaching surveillance state, and I didn't know what to do. And in the end, in 2013, Oakland Privacy showed me what I could do, and I will never be able to repay the group for that.

I was thinking back to our first surveillance transparency ordinance in Santa Clara. EFF actually came down, and they took a picture of me speaking at that meeting and put it on their blog, and I thought, I wish I could put into words what lay behind that picture, which was 11 stinking months of going down to Santa Clara and sitting in that room with the goddamn Finance and Governmental Operations Committee where they were trying to bury our ordinance because let's face it, the powers that be don't want transparency. And every month standing there and saying, "I'm not going to let you do that. I'm just not."

We succeeded. It became law, I think it was June 7th, 2016, which doesn't feel like that long ago. And now there are 12. Eight of them are here in the Bay Area, a couple in Massachusetts, Seattle, and somehow Nashville did it without us and more power to them.

So I think that's pretty much what I kind of want to say here. I mean, what Oakland Privacy does fundamentally is we watch. The logo is the eye of Sauron, and well, I'm not a Tolkien geek, but I deal with what I am a part of. Hey look—I went to a basement, it was all guys. It is what it is. It's a little more gender-balanced now, but not entirely. But the point is that eye kind of stands for something important because it's the eye of "we are watching," and in really mechanical terms, we try to track every single agenda of God knows how many city councils there are in the Bay Area. I think we're watching about 25 now, and if a couple more of you would volunteer, we might make that 35.

But the point is, and every time there's a little action going on locally that's just making the surveillance state that much worse, we try to intervene. And we show up and the sad truth is that at this point, they can kind of see us coming from a mile away, and they're like, "Oh, great. You guys came to see us." But the point is, that's our opportunity to start that conversation. Oakland is a laboratory, it's a place where we can ... And Oakland's not perfect. All that you need to do is take a look at OPD and you know that Oakland's not perfect. Right? But it's a place where we've been able to ask the questions and we're basically trying to export that as far as it possibly can, and we go there and we ask the questions.

And really, the most important part to me and the part that gives me hope is we get a lot of people that come to the basement to talk to us and basically share with us how dystopia is coming, which we know. It's here. There's no hope, right? But when those people find the way to lift up their voices and say no, that's what gives me hope. So thank you. Thank you and Brian Hofer is also going to make a final set of comments. Thank you.

Brian Hofer: So my name is Brian Hofer, I recently left Oakland Privacy. I founded Secure Justice with a handful of our coalition partners that are, some of who are in this room tonight. And we're going to continue carrying on the fight against surveillance, just like Oakland Privacy. I also had the privilege of chairing the city of Oakland's Commission, as you heard earlier, and it's an honor and a privilege to be recognized by EFF for the same reasons that my former colleagues have been saying, because you've been standing next to us in the trenches. You've seen us at the meetings, lobbying, joined in the long hours waiting at city council meetings late at night just for that two minute opportunity that Nash is now an expert at. You know how much labor goes into these efforts, and so I really want to thank you for standing next to us.

This path has been pretty unexpected for me. I quit a litigation job, was unemployed, and I read this East Bay Express article by Darwin BondGraham and Ali Winston based on public record requests that Oakland Privacy members had founded. And there's a little side bar in that journal that the very next day, just fate I guess, that this upstart group Oakland Privacy was meeting and that I could attend it. It's even more strange to me that I stayed. It was a two hour discussion about papier-mache street puppets and the people asking me if I was a cop when I walked in. Nobody wanted to sit next to me.

So when I finally spoke up and asked how many city council members they spoke to, the room got quiet. And so that became my job, because I was the one guy in the suit. At the honorable Linda Lye's going away party a couple months ago, I remarked that if we had lost the Domain Awareness Center vote, I would have never become an activist. I would have returned to my couch. I spent hundreds of hours on that project, and I would have been really disillusioned. But March 4th, 2014, which was the vote, is still the greatest day of my life. We generated international headlines by defeating the surveillance state in the true power to the people sense.

It was quite a contrast the following morning, on the Oakland Privacy list, when the naysayers thought the world had ended in calamity. Little did they know, that was the formation of the ad hoc privacy commission; we were about to change the conversation around surveillance and community control. EFF is directly responsible for helping us form that privacy commission in Oakland, and so it's my turn to congratulate you. Matt Cagle of the ACLU, Dia Kayyali, and myself were sitting around trying to figure out how to make it a permanent thing, and we noticed that another piece of technology was on the agenda. We didn't have any mandate or authority to write a privacy policy for it. But Dia signed a letter with me asking that we be given that task.

It worked, and that established the Privacy Commission as a policy writing instrument that remains today. As our colleagues were saying, that's been the launching pad for a lot of this legislative success around the greater Bay Area. It's the first of many dominoes to fall. I want to close with a challenge to EFF——and not your staff—like any non-profit, they're overworked and underpaid, because I'm sending them work and I don't pay for it. I was supposed to insert an Adam Schwartz joke there. I believe that we're in a fight for the very fabric of this nation. Trump, people think he's a buffoon. He's very effective at destroying our civic institutions. The silent majority is silent, secure in their privilege, or too afraid or unaware how to combat what's going on. So I'm going to tell you a dirty secret about Oakland Privacy: we're not smarter than anyone else. We have no independently wealthy people. We have no connections. We didn't get a seat at the table via nepotism or big donations. We have no funding for the tens of thousands of volunteer hours spent advocating for human rights. And yet as you heard from the previous speakers, the formula of watching agendas, which anyone with an Internet connection can do in their pajamas, submitting public record requests, which anyone can do in their pajamas, and showing up relentlessly, which in Berkeley and Oakland, you can do in your pajamas—that led to a coalition legislative streak that will never be duplicated. That four year run will never happen again. So I ask that you challenge your membership to do the same, pajamas optional. We need numbers. We need people to get off their couch, like me, for the first time. The Domain Awareness Center was literally the first time I ever walked inside the open city hall, and I apologize for the police lingo, but your membership is the force multiplier and it's critical that more folks get involved. If you don't already know, somehow next week turned onto facial recognition ban week. Berkeley, Portland, Emeryville, we have our Georgetown national convening where I know EFF will be. It's critical that new diverse faces start showing up instead of the same actors. As Tracy said, they can see us from a mile away. We need more people.

In October, we expect four more cities to jump on board. Only one is in California, demonstrating that this isn't just a Bay Area bubble. It's got legs. And like the Domain Awareness Center moment, we've got a chance to change the national conversation, and we better take advantage of it. Thank you for this honor and thank you for this award.

Acceptance Speech by William Gibson

Audio Thank you, Cory. And thank you, danah boyd. I will confess, I was actually ... I will confess I was actually a bit worried about coming down here and getting to this part of the evening and not having heard what she said or something very like it. And I found that a dismaying worry, and it's now been dismissed. So thank you.

This is the second time this year that I've received an award I wasn't expecting. The first one, Science Fiction Writers of America's Grand Master Award, I foolishly assumed I was too young for. With this one, though, I'd not thought it a possibility because I'm very probably, and I'm sure I could win a big bet with this, the least technically literate person in this room. I seem to be here, though, I seem to myself to be here, because in the early 80s, knowing nothing whatever about computers, I began to listen to those who did, drawn not by their understanding, but by their vernacular poetics. Because I'm an English major. I got my B.A. in it, my specialty is in comparative literary critical methodologies. And when that also comes in really handy for a novelist is when we get a really shitty review. But what I actually did to come up with that stuff was sit in the bar at '80s SF cons in Seattle and eavesdrop, really really intensely. And then I would deconstruct the poetics of the computer literate.

Author William Gibson accepts his 2019 Barlow

The first time, for instance, that I heard interface used as an active noun, I physically swooned. Likewise, virus as a term of digital technology. That was where I first heard that as well. Made my eyes bug out, visibly. And if you don't believe me, I'll refer you to a scene in Neuromancer where Case, my street-smart cyberspace cowboy, finding that the going's just gotten particularly rough, issues an urgent call for a modem. Because I had, I confess, no idea what a modem was. But I loved the sound of the word. However, there's another scene in Neuromancer, one in which Case overhears sort of in background, partly what seems to the reader to be an infomercial for children, and it's describing something it calls, "The Matrix," with a capital M, which seems in context to be the sum of all this cyberspace thing that Case is always running around in. But there's also in that little infomercial, there's a strong suggestion that the majority of that, of cyberspace, the majority of the content, is banal, everyday, absolutely quotidian. And by putting that in, I think I actually got that right. I somehow guessed that it all wouldn't be shit-hot cowboys versus a new order of giant corporations. So tonight, receiving this award from EFF, which by the way, I first heard of as a twinkle in John Perry Barlow's eye, though probably over the phone because he could do that. I'm very, very grateful that EFF exists, that it exists today to confront, among other things, the threat of the new order of giant corporations making it their business to gather magnitudes of utterly banal little bits of business about all of us. So thank you, EFF.

Special thanks to our sponsors: Airbnb; Dropbox; Matthew Prince; Medium; O'Reilly Media; Ridder, Costa & Johnstone LLP; and Ron Reed for supporting EFF and the 2019 Pioneer Award Ceremony. If you or your company are interested in learning more about sponsorship, please contact [email protected].

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anonymouslove342-blog · 8 years ago

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GENETIC HARD DRIVE: Science Fiction The human body ticks all the boxes for a highly advanced biological computer system. A computer hard drive, or hard disk, stores information as digitally encoded data and the human body is almost the same. It’s hard drive is what we call genetics (biological instructions), including DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, and trillions of cells. You can see how reptilian our DNA looks in close up and how appropriate it is that DNA is often symbolized by the two snakes, caduceus, they symbol of the medical profession. When human procreate we this as two parents combining their genetics to produce a child that is a combination of both. Sometimes the physical and personality traits of one parent will be more emphasized, sometimes the other, and maybe even traits from further back in the genetic line. From the perspective that I am presenting here, what we call procreation is actually two hard drives, the parents, downloading their genetic data to produce a combination card drive, the genetics traits of a child. The two spiralling strands of DNA in the cell are said to be the body’s genetic library, but there is something to emphasize here. We need to remember that what we see as physical DNA and cells are only the decoded pictures that brain constructs from reading energetic/digital information. Cells, DBA and everything else we perceive as physical, are just the decoded reality that the genetic data is actually stored. The storage capacity is extraordinary. The more information than any device that human science can construct. There is far more to DNA than just data storage, which scientists still know very little about in truth. 95-97% of DNA is called “junk DNA” because scientist have no idea what it does, stored in the body and lays remnant and docile, and is not used for bodily functionality. Stored genetic data from our evolution. But of course, it is not shockingly off the pace when it comes to understanding reality and how it works, plus the fact that Reptilian alien genetic manipulation has rewired and disconnected much of the junk DNA from its rightful function. DNA is a universal software program, DNA of all living things-biological computer systems are essentially alike in many ways. There is very different in the DNA genetic makeup of a mouse, a flower, a fish, or a human compared with the vast differences expressed in their physical form. Some 85% of genes in mice and humans are the same, similarly with rats. This makes the idea of rat brain cells flying a plane simulator seem less fantastic. DNA of all kinds has the same four codes, known as adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine or AGCT. The only difference between physical forms is the order in which these four codes are put together, and very small differences in the coding can produce massive differences in physical characteristics. DNA codes look like a digital sequence and they remind you of those green codes in the Matrix movies. So they should, because like everything in the virtual reality universe, DNA is a digital as well as vibrational phenomenon. Every desktop computer has its own digital identity code, and it is the same with the human body computer; it also has a unique vibrational code and does every species. They operate on specific wavelengths. It is through these compatible vibrational codes that members of a species can communicate over long distances. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle put it very well said: DNA is a universal software code. From bacteria to humans, the basic instructions for life are written with them same language. There can be no greater confirmation of the computer nature of the human body than the fact that cells are biological computer chips, and we have 75 trillion of them. Bruce Lipton, a research scientist and former medical school professor details his study of cells, particularly the cell membrane. He discovered that the membrane is a liquid crystal semiconductor with gates and channels and a computer chip is defined as a crystal semiconductor with gates and channels. He writes, “I spent several more intense seconds comparing and contrasting biomembranes with silicon semiconductors. I was momentarily stunned when I realized that the identical nature of their definitions was not a coincidence. The cell membrane was indeed a structural and functional equivalent of a silicon chip. The principle component of semiconductors used in our electronic and chips is the silicon crystal, hence the term silicon valley in California and the silicon economy. Scientists have found that DNA and cells are indeed part of the hard drive of the body-computer. CENTRAL PROCESSING: How appropriate that a central processing unit, or CPU, is known as the brain of a computer because it reads, processes, and filter all communications traffic. The brain is the central processing unit of the body. It filters information passing around the body, assesses it and decides what to do with it or where it should go. It controls the body’s electrical/chemical, or electrochemical, systems which are, another form of information communication and response. These systems connect with the meridian circuit board network of energy lines-which in turn interact with the series of vortices known by the ancient Sankskrit word for Chakra (meaning wheels of light). These chakras connect through into other energetic levels of being beyond human sight. All these sources of information are processed through the human brain, which operates on many levels than science appreciates. Its not just a central processing unit for the five senses; it operates multidimensionally. This means is that if a malevolent force wished to control human life by controlling human perception of self and the world then the brain would be a prime target within the physical realm. It is the brain that constructs the reality we think we are experiencing as the out there world of people, places and landscapes. Controlling the brain’s perception of reality dictates what people will experience as decoded physical reality. It will control their lives as we shall see. One other point to stress about the brain and human genetics in general: the body is not just a computer; it is a biological, living, thinking computer and can respond to changing circumstances. It is believed by medical science wrongly as usual that the brain is hardwired or fixed from birth and cannot change with circumstances. If you damage your brain, that’s it, nothing can be done about the functions you have lost. This is patent nonsense, however, as the pioneers of what is called neuroplasticity have shown. Most people with strokes and many forms of brain damage and dysfunction by training the brain to rewire and decode information in another way. These are specific parts of the brain that specialize in certain senses and activities, but they can also perform other functions well. The emerging science of neuroplasticity has proved this beyond question. Computer Memory: A computer has two forms of memory-the hard drive that retains information permanently, or until its erased, and a virtual memory, or RAM, which is used while you are working at the keyboard opening different files and other applications. When you open too many pages or files at one time and it breaches your RAM, or virtual memory space, you will get a notice on the screen saying that your virtual memory is too low and advising you to respond by closing some applications. When you press save on the computer the information held in the virtual memory is transferred to the hard drive to be held indefinitely. The body computer is the same; we call it short term and long term memory. We retain a certain amount of information for a very short time, not more than a minute is the general opinion of researchers, and what registers passes into the long term memory-or goes from RAM to hard drive. With forms of dementia and short term memory process can malfunction and so you have people who forget what they said or did a minute ago, but can clearly recall events of decades ago. Their save function is not working as it should. We also have a version of running low, we say, hold on, slow down, I can’t remember all of that. This is the body-computer’s way of saying my virtual memory is too low; please close some applications. Basically anything you see, hear, touch, or experience enters almost instantly into your short term memory. We have short terms memories so we can use something immediately and then forget it is we no longer need to know it. We use it to recognize or understand something right at the moment that we’re faced with it. Everything, essentially with short term memory… Your long term memory is where you keep all the memories and facts that you use to define who you are. Your first memory as a child, the first love letter you ever wrote or received, the time you broke your arm-its all in there. While we can’t explain for sure why we recall certain things and not others, we do know some things about long term memory. Information passes through short term to get to long term. It’s the same principle as virtual memory and the hard drive. COMPUTER SECURITY: Wherever you look with the human body, the computer analogy plays out. Everyone who works with a computer will be familiar with anti-virus or firewall software which blocks, isolates, or destroys viruses and files or other information that invades the computer system and causes it to malfunction. In the worst cases it can so scramble the operating and communication systems that they shut down altogether and won’t restart. In other words, computers die. Computer viruses are small software programs that are designed to spread from one computer to another and to interfere with computer operation. A virus might corrupt or delete data on your computer, use your email program to spread itself to other computers, or even erase everything on your hard disk. That’s how viruses and other forms of illness and disease attack the human body and can be spread from person to person. So are human viruses and other forms of disease. They are disruptive software programs within the virtual reality-information that is decoded by the body computer and causes it to miss read the usual flow of data. The makers of the Norton anti-virus system include this theme on their website: One of the biggest slowdowns of a PC is caused by viruses, adware or spyware as it’s often called…A virus is a piece of malicious software code written to cause some kind of damage to a computer system, or network, or even the Internet itself. Viruses spread, similar to their biological namesake, from one machine to another and can spread havoc wherever they go. When it reads the data accurately, the body is healthy because it is in digital and vibrational in harmony; but when the virus throws a symbolic spanner in the works (rogue data) it triggers information disharmony or what we call illness. Scientist may appear to see a physical virus under the microscope, but that’s only after his or her brain has decoded it into that form. We are 3 dimensional beings, but certain alien groups are 6 dimensional, thus verifying the differences of how we identify, sense, and understand reality. If we could see the virus before the decoding we would see it as digital (mathematical data software beyond its physical exterior), and on a mother level as a vibrating energy field or waveform. To deal with the explosion of computer viruses today we employ what is called anti-virus software, which is programmed to detect and deal with disruptive data packages before they can harm the computer’s operating system. This is an Internet explanation of how these anti-virus systems deal with one form of virus called malware which also goes under names like worms, trojan horses, rootkits, spyware, dishonest adware and crime ware: Signature based detection is the most common method that antivirus software utilizes to identify malware. To identify viruses and other malware, antivirus software compares the contents of a file to a dictionary of virus signatures. Because viruses can embed themselves in existing files, the entire file is searched, not just as a whole but also in pieces. The makers of Norton Anti-Virus say of their software: It runs unobtrusively in the background, checking all vulnerable files for possible infection by mischievous, sometimes malevolent, programs called viruses and worms. It does this by looking for the identifying signatures of these worms and viruses and comparing them to known viruses for which it has files. Those passages could just as easily be describing the human immune system, which is a fantastically more sophisticated version of anti-software. It creates firewalls to defend the body computer against attacks from disruptive data, better known as illness and disease, and to do this it compares the contents of a file to a dictionary of virus signatures. This is why when a new disease comes along which the immune system isn’t programmed to read, people can drop like flies because they have no protection. This happened when smallpox was introduced by Europeans to the then smallpox-free Native American population. New anti-virus signatures have to be programmed into desktop computers as new threats are identified, but because the body computer is living or biological it has the ability to think and work it out for itself. When a new disease emerges, the immune system eventually learns to identify the signature and deal with it. Ironically, and not by accident, vaccines are supposed to boost such protection with foreign proteins and weakened viruses to train the immune system to defend itself against a negative or dead disease or bacteria. I have identified the body’s computer’s hard drive, circuit board, central processing unit, and memory systems, and the list of body-to-computer connections just goes on and on. What happens, for instance when a computer shuts down and ticks over with a blank screen and minimum activity? We say it is in sleep mode-the same state that our body computer foes into when it is at rest and using minimum energy to tick over. When a computer won’t turn on we say it is dead. And what is the quickest way to kill a computer? Drop its from a great height or deal it with a fierce blow. So it is with the body computer because, in both cases, it destroys the communication system that gives it life. Even some mainstream scientists are seeing the connections between computers and the human body, though not the wider implications of what that means. Computer work on the binary number system of 1 and 0 which represent on and off electrical impulses. I found this explanation on the Internet: A digital computer is designed to process data in numerical form; its circuits perform directly the mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The numbers operated on by a digital computer are expressed in the binary system; binary digits, or bits, are 0 and 1…Binary digits are easily expressed in the computer circuitry by the presence (1) or absence (0) of a current or voltage. There are almost 300 extraterrestrial biological entities that live on and visit our planet, with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities and advanced weaponry, inducing mind control, telepathy, telekinesis, shapeshifting, take invisible form, hijack bodies through demon possession, are biological super soldiers, teleportation according to KGB files. This elicits much interest that needs to be further examined and tested for defense purposes. Advanced aliens who have infiltrated our planet for centuries and during the Eisenhower administration. The Mayan Civilization and Atlantis (our ancestors) during the story of Noah’s Ark were destroyed by extraterrestrials. I would like to study and analyze their biological forms and capabilities in order to protect against potential adversaries who seek to control and dominate humans, and find their biological weaknesses in battle. Furthermore, experiment with alien human genetic hybridization in constructing super soldiers, and treatments for those who have been injured during battle. From a chemical and scientific perspective, I would like to study alien weaponry as well in terms of how they function and operate. Further biological analysis across phylogenies genetically will be discussed later on.

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