#dystopia dystopia dystopia

[cuprohastes]

About ten, fifteen years ago I wrote a story about a guy living in a Capitalist dystopia. His walls, furniture, and tableware are all covered in smart displays. Basically animated wallpaper. It's sold as being able to turn your room or objects into anything - A nice forest view, outer space, a fantasy realm... but the companies that run this stuff keep sneaking ads in.

It gets so bad he's always being woken up by adverts that offer insomnia cures and better bedding that play when he tries to sleep.

So he buys the ad-free tier, and it's great... for a few months. And then he starts getting adverts from 'premium partners'. So he goes up a level... and the same thing happens.

So he jailbreaks his wallpaper and sends all the ad servers to 0.0.0.0 and voila... he can sleep.

Until this SWAT team blows his door off and drag him off to jail. The Ad companies are suing him for loss of revenue for the products he' notionally have bought if he'd watched their adverts, based on some weird 'The average consumer buys X products with an average value of Y' calculation.

The judge is like 'well I dun wanna annoy the sponsors' so he RICO's this guy's house and possessions and sends him to jail.

... which is a nice relaxed non-volent offender jail for the corporately disenfranchised. But because these people have no money... there's no ads and now he's happy because the only place he's free... is in prison.

Which at the time was a bit much and now it's like: Called it.

Elon's suing companies for not advertising because he's losing revenue. He's also cranking the price of Ad Free Twitter. Disney and Amazon play adverts on their paid service when services used to be free because of the adverts... and now you have to pay to watch the adverts or go up a couple of tiers.

And google's going around freaking out about ad-blockers.

[marithlizard]

Oh _lovely_. Everyone go turn this off:

Enhanced Visual Search in Photos allows you to search for photos using landmarks or points of interest. Your device privately matches places in your photos to a global index Apple maintains on our servers. We apply homomorphic encryption and differential privacy, and use an OHTTP relay that hides [your] IP address. This prevents Apple from learning about the information in your photos. You can turn off Enhanced Visual Search at any time on your iOS or iPadOS device by going to Settings > Apps > Photos. On Mac, open Photos and go to Settings > General.

[reasonsforhope]

We have already averted truly apocalyptic levels of global warming.

Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.

To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:

"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years... The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse." (New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)

So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.

The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.

Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.

How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?

I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.

(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)

We're going to get there.

Say it with me. We're going to get there.

[hellsgate-roadhouse]

📺 📺📺📺📺📺📺📺📺📺📺📺📺📺📺

[mysharona1987]

[technoturian]

I am VISCERALLY reacting to this image of a multibillion dollar corporation buying the faces of POC and then puppeting their lifeless bodies.

@antidisneyinc @positively--speculative @dirhwangdaseul

[nando161mando]

If you want to know why people have lost faith in capitalism, this might help

[gemkun]

@nihilara said : “ can you tell me something i don’t know… “ kuro asks,,, as mimi stares silent and wide eyed from his shoulder…

      ⸻       finally   ,   a   query   that   is   worthwhile   ,   but   such   a   generalisation   ,   is   a   challenge   within   itself   as   he   filters   the   reservoir   that   overspills.   unleashing   rivulets   that   shimmer   in   palettes   of   gold.

  ❝   have   you   heard   of   xin   —   41   ?   ❞   he   extends   it   towards   the   one   shackled   by   immortality   ,   undoubtedly   plagued   by   his   everlasting   flight.   ❝   it   is   an   impoverished   planet   ,   most   notable   for   its   production   of   hallucinogenic   spices.   the   people   are   divided   into   two   factions   :   the   natives   and   the   slinkans   ,   where   the   latter   have   established   themselves   as   the   domineering   cosmocracy.   ❞

  his   lips   purse   ,   as   he   reflects   on   the   implications   and   laws   that   incarcerate   the   less   fortunate.   a   bridge   to   be   burned.   ❝   when   i   see   an   opportunity   ,   i   will   visit   this   destination   ,   and   reveal   the   follies   that   come   with   their   system.   for   a   practice   that   involves   the   deprivation   of   literature   and   knowledge   .   .   .   it   is   an   act   of   heresy.   ❞

[netscapenavigator-official]

Once the bugs get ironed out, AI Image Generation will forever change propaganda and how easy it is to make and distribute.

[myjetpack]

My latest @guardian books cartoon.

[cant-find-anyone-elseeee]

there was a moment when the people in the movie theatre and the capitol audience in the stands were laughing at the same things, having the same reactions to the games, to the deaths, to flickermans jokes, to the doctor's announcement...i wonder aren't we watching it for entertainment too

suzanne collins' books may exist in popular culture as "dystopian", but they have always been a meticulous and startlingly close social critique of our world. at what point does our own idolization of the movies and the books repeat that story? we watch just as the capitol audience does.

all dystopia eventually crosses a line from realistic futurism to current relevancy. how long will it take us to realize we've already crossed that line with these books? and the very people who need to realize this are the ones in that audience...real or fake, we're the same: consuming and consuming.

[sinensis26]

"Oh so you think murder is okay now? You support MURDER?"

Yes. Full stop. Ive spent my entire life watching school shootings happen, seen my country blow billions of dollars on unnecessary wars, and stood in the middle of peaceful protests that get mocked and ignored. I did everything right, and learned that whats "right" simply makes you easier to ignore by the people who hold power.

I grew up in the sweet and docile "Babysitters Club" era, and have watched the next generations cut their teeth on "Hunger Games" and all kinds of dystopian lit. What did you all think was going to happen, when you kept tightening the noose on kids who were reading about revolution between active shooter drills?

I dont like murder, nor do I think most people do. But my god, you cant desensitize a nation full of people and still expect them to mourn their oppressors.

[reveuseinflorence]

"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."

- George Orwell, 1984

[ralfmaximus]

beginning in at least 2014 infotainment systems in the company’s vehicles began downloading and storing a copy of all text messages on smartphones when they were connected to the system. An Annapolis, Maryland-based company, Berla Corporation, provides the technology to some car manufacturers but does not offer it to the general public, the lawsuit said. Once messages are downloaded, Berla’s software makes it impossible for vehicle owners to access their communications and call logs but does provide law enforcement with access, the lawsuit said.

Yikes. Your car is probably keeping all your text messages and sending them to its manufacturer if you connect to your infotainment system.

The manufacturer does two things with this data:

shares it with law enforcement

sells it to advertisers for extra revenue

HOW WONDERFUL

[nando161mando]

Gary Stevenson: ‘Economists have been all wrong about almost everything for 15 years now’

[neonelven]