#hate technology

[trash-user]

I HATE MY ASSIGNMENTS BEING THROUGH A THIRD PARTY WEBSITE

IM NOT FUCKING STUPID AND THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL I MISSED THE NUMERATOR OFF MY FRACTIONS

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

I LITERALLY TRIPLE CHECKED THAT I HAD TYPED IN THE SAME THINK AS I HAD WRITTEN DOWN :///////////

[thechildoftwilight]

literally was just complaining about this earlier today after logging into my email on a library computer. i am of the vehement opinion that updating EVERYTHING so that it needs to be through your phone is a horrible idea. for example my college bookstore recently renovated and now students are no longer allowed to walk through the stacks and pick up the books they need to buy themselves. they have to place an order online and then pick it up in person. not the same i know but there's so many things. and what if you lose your phone? what do you do then? everything is so reliant on phones these days and it makes me mad.

every genius who thinks mandatory two-factor authentication is a good idea should be forced to do tech support for a public library that serves a lot of elderly poor people

[j-screamo]

[pepperpepi]

wood sy

[rootworks]

needed to put them in a lineup for my own peace of mind 🌱

[mostlysignssomeportents]

FCC strikes a blow against prison profiteering

TOMORROW NIGHT (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

Here's a tip for policymakers hoping to improve the lives of the most Americans with the least effort: help prisoners.

After all, America is the most prolific imprisoner of its own people of any country in world history. We lock up more people than Stalin, than Mao, more than Botha, de Klerk or any other Apartheid-era South African president. And it's not just America's vast army of the incarcerated who are afflicted by our passion for imprisonment: their families and friends suffer, too.

That familial suffering isn't merely the constant pain of life without a loved one, either. America's prison profiteers treat prisoners' families as ATMs who can be made to pay and pay and pay.

This may seem like a losing strategy. After all, prison sentences are strongly correlated with poverty, and even if your family wasn't desperate before the state kidnapped one of its number and locked them behind bars, that loved one's legal defense and the loss of their income is a reliable predictor of downward social mobility.

Decent people don't view poor people as a source of riches. But for a certain kind of depraved sadist, the poor are an irresistible target. Sure, poor people don't have much money, but what they lack even more is protection under the law ("conservativism consists of the principle that there is an in-group whom the law protects but does not bind, and an out-group whom the law binds but does not protect" -Wilhoit). You can enjoy total impunity as you torment poor people, make them so miserable and afraid for their lives and safety that they will find some money, somewhere, and give it to you.

Mexican cartels understand this. They do a brisk trade in kidnapping asylum seekers whom the US has illegally forced to wait in Mexico to have their claims processed. The families of refugees – either in their home countries or in the USA – are typically badly off but they understand that Mexico will not lift a finger to protect a kidnapped refugee, and so when the kidnappers threaten the most grisly tortures as a means of extracting ransom, those desperate family members do whatever it takes to scrape up the blood-money.

What's more, the families of asylum seekers are not much better off than their kidnapped loved ones when it comes to seeking official protection. Family members who stayed behind in human rights hellholes like Bukele's El Salvador can't get their government to lodge official complaints with the Mexican ambassador, and family members who made it to the USA are in no position to get their Congressjerk to intercede with ICE or the Mexican consulate. This gives Mexico's crime syndicates total latitude to kidnap, torture, and grow rich by targeting the poorest, most desperate people in the world.

The private contractors that supply services to America's prisons are basically Mexican refugee-kidnappers with pretensions and shares listed on the NYSE. After decades of consolidation, the prison contracting sector has shrunk to two gigantic companies: Securus and Viapath (formerly Global Tellink). These private-equity backed behemoths dominate their sector, and have diversified, providing all kinds of services, from prison cafeteria meals to commissary, the prison stores where prisoners can buy food and other items.

If you're following closely, this is one of those places where the hair on the back of your neck starts to rise. These companies make money when prisoners buy food from the commissary, and they're also in charge of the quality of the food in the mess hall. If the food in the mess hall is adequate and nutritious, there's no reason to buy food from the commissary.

This is what economists call a "moral hazard." You can think of it as the reason that prison ramen costs 300% more than ramen in the free world:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/20/captive-market/#locked-in

(Not just ramen: in America's sweltering prisons, an 8" fan costs $40, and the price of water went up in Texas prisons by 50% during last summer's heatwave.)

It's actually worse than that: if you get sick from eating bad prison food, the same company that poisoned you gets paid to operate the infirmary where you're treated:

https://theappeal.org/massachusetts-prisons-wellpath-dentures-teeth/

Now, the scam of abusing prisoners to extract desperate pennies from their families is hardly new. There's written records of this stretching back to the middle ages. Nor is this pattern a unique one: making an unavoidable situation as miserable as possible and then upcharging people who have the ability to pay to get free of the torture is basically how the airlines work. Making coach as miserable as possible isn't merely about shaving pennies by shaving inches off your legroom: it's a way to "incentivize" anyone who can afford it to pay for an upgrade to business-class. The worse coach is, the more people you can convince to dip into their savings or fight with their boss to move classes. The torments visited upon everyone else in coach are economically valuable to the airlines: their groans and miseries translate directly into windfall profits, by convincing better-off passengers to pay not to have the same thing done to them.

Of course, with rare exceptions (flying to get an organ transplant, say) plane tickets are typically discretionary. Housing, on the other hand, is a human right and a prerequisite for human thriving. The worse things are for tenants, the more debt and privation people will endure to become home-owners, so it follows that making renters worse off makes homeowners richer:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

For Securus and Viapath, the path to profitability is to lobby for mandatory, long prison sentences and then make things inside the prison as miserable as possible. Any prisoner whose family can find the funds can escape the worst of it, and all the prisoners who can't afford it serve the economically important function of showing the prisoners whose families can afford it how bad things will be if they don't pay.

If you're thinking that prisoners might pay Securus, Viapath and their competitors out of their own prison earnings, forget it. These companies have decided that the can make more by pocketing the difference between the vast sums paid by third parties for prisoners' labor and the pennies the prisoners get from their work. Remember, the 13th Amendment specifically allows for the enslavement of incarcerated people! Six states ban paying prisoners at all. North Carolina caps prisoners' wages at one dollar per day. The national average prison wage is $0.52/hour. Prisoners' labor produces $11b/year in goods and services:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

Forced labor and extortion are a long and dishonorable tradition in incarceration, but this century saw the introduction of a novel, exciting way of extracting wealth from prisoners and their families. It started when private telcos took over prison telephones and raised the price of a prison phone call. These phone companies found willing collaborators in local jail and prison systems: all they had to do was offer to split the take with the jailers.

With the advent of the internet, things got far worse. Digitalization meant that prisons could replace the library, adult educations, commissary accounts, letter-mail, parcels, in-person visits and phone calls with a single tablet. These cheaply made tablets were offered for free to prisoners, who lost access to everything from their kids' handmade birthday cards to in-person visits with those kids.

In their place, prisoners' families had to pay huge premiums to have their letters scanned so that prisoners could pay (again) to view those scans on their tablets. Instead of in-person visits, prisoners families had to pay $3-10/minute for a janky, postage-stamp sized video. Perversely, jails and prisons replaced their in-person visitation rooms with rooms filled with shitty tablets where family members could sit and videoconference with their incarcerated loved ones who were just a few feet away:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Capitalists hate capitalism. The capital classes are on a relentless search for markets with captive customers and no competitors. The prison-tech industry was catnip for private equity funds, who bought and "rolled" up prison contractors, concentrating the sector into a duopoly of debt-laden companies whose ability to pay off their leveraged buyouts was contingent on their ability to terrorize prisoners' families into paying for their overpriced, low-quality products and services.

One particularly awful consequence of these rollups was the way that prisoners could lose access to their data when their prison's service-provider was merged with a rival. When that happened, the IT systems would be consolidated, with the frequent outcome that all prisoners' data was lost. Imagine working for two weeks to pay for a song or a book, or a scan of your child's handmade Father's Day card, only to have the file deleted in an IT merger. Now imagine that you're stuck inside for another 20 years.

This is a subject I've followed off and on for years. It's such a perfect bit of end-stage capitalist cruelty, combining mass incarceration with monopolies. Even if you're not imprisoned, this story is haunting, because on the one hand, America keeps thinking of new reasons to put more people behind bars, and on the other hand, every technological nightmare we dream up for prisoners eventually works its way out to the rest of us in a process I call the "shitty technology adoption curve." As William Gibson says, "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed" – but the future sure pools up thick and dystopian around America's prisoners:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

My background interest in the subject got sharper a few years ago when I started working on The Bezzle, my 2023 high-tech crime thriller about prison-tech grifters:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

One of the things that was on my mind when I got to work on that book was the 2017 court-case that killed the FCC's rules limit interstate prison-call gouging. The FCC could have won that case, but Trump's FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, dropped it:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/prisoners-lose-again-as-court-wipes-out-inmate-calling-price-caps/

With that bad precedent on the books, the only hope prisoners had for relief from the FCC was for Congress to enact legislation specifically granting the agency the power to regulate prison telephony. Incredibly, Congress did just that, with Biden signing the "Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act" in early 2023:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1541/text

With the new law in place, it fell to the FCC use those newfound powers. Compared to agencies like the FTC and the NLRB, Biden's FCC has been relatively weak, thanks in large part to the Biden administration's refusal to defend its FCC nomination for Gigi Sohn, a brilliant and accomplished telecoms expert. You can tell that Sohn would have been a brilliant FCC commissioner because of the way that America's telco monopolists and their allies in the senate (mostly Republicans, but some Democrats, too) went on an all-out offensive against her, using the fact that she is gay to smear her and ultimately defeat her nomination:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband/

But even without Sohn, the FCC has managed to do something genuinely great for America's army of the imprisoned. This week, the FCC voted in price-caps on prison calls, so that call rates will drop from $11.35 for 15 minutes to just $0.90. Both interstate and intrastate calls will be capped at $0.06-0.12/minute, with a phased rollout starting in January:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/fcc-closes-final-loopholes-that-keep-prison-phone-prices-exorbitantly-high/

It's hard to imagine a policy that will get more bang for a regulator's buck than this one. Not only does this represent a huge savings for prisoners and their families, those savings are even larger in proportion to their desperate, meager finances.

It shows you how important a competent, qualified regulator is. When it comes to political differences between Republicans and Democrats, regulatory competence is a grossly underrated trait. Trump's FCC Chair Ajit Pai handed out tens of billions of dollars in public money to monopoly carriers to improve telephone networks in underserved areas, but did so without first making accurate maps to tell him where the carriers should invest. As a result, that money was devoured by executive bonuses and publicly financed dividends and millions of Americans entered the pandemic lockdowns with broadband that couldn't support work-from-home or Zoom school. When Biden's FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel took over, one of her first official acts was to commission a national study and survey of broadband quality. Republicans howled in outrage:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/10/digital-redlining/#stop-confusing-the-issue-with-relevant-facts

The telecoms sector has been a rent-seeking, monopolizing monster since the days of Samuel Morse:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/18/the-bell-system/#were-the-phone-company-we-dont-have-to-care

Combine telecoms and prisons, and you get a kind of supermonster, the meth-gator of American neofeudalism:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tennessee-police-warn-locals-not-flush-drugs-fear-meth-gators-n1030291

The sector is dirty beyond words, and it corrupts everything it touches – bribing prison officials to throw out all the books in the prison library and replace them with DRM-locked, high-priced ebooks that prisoners must toil for weeks to afford, and that vanish from their devices whenever a prison-tech company merges with a rival:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

The Biden presidency has been fatally marred by the president's avid support of genocide, and nothing will change that. But for millions of Americans, the Biden administration's policies on telecoms, monopoly, and corporate crime have been a source of profound, lasting improvements.

It's not just presidents who can make this difference. Millions of America's prisoners are rotting in state and county jails, and as California has shown, state governments have broad latitude to kick out prison profiteers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/08/captive-audience/#good-at-their-jobs

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/19/martha-wright-reed/#capitalists-hate-capitalism

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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[sea-buns]

captioners you are so valid

[l3irdl3rain0]

nearing 2 hours of trying to get my computer to work. considering selling all my belongings and moving to the middle of the woods.

[kibibarel]

my phone of 10 years has finally decided to kick the bucket and after having a harrowing time deciding on its replacement i am APPALLED to learn that apparently most people get a new phone every 2 - 3 years?? many people every single year????? please help me, i'm having a boomer moment trying to comprehend this

[screensandtangledwires]

my beloved , 4-channel tektronix TDS2014C digital storage oscilloscope

[fruttymoment]

Facial recognition system moment

[mrmanbat]

Brother- I keep on seeing people who think Jason can’t use technology bc he died.

Bro was trained by Batman and is a current vigilante?? He definitely has a better understanding of engineering and technology than most average people.

What I can see is him having no clue what’s going on on social media. Bro doesn’t have the free time and the gap he has in current events is def discouraging him.

Jason has the MySpace account he created pre-crowbar and he still thinks vine exists.

[kingkatsuki]

Anyway, while I was gone I was thinking of this stupid idea with Bakugou (as usual)

Imagine your eighteenth birthday is when you find out who you’re bonded to, and this bond is created via telepathy. A connection opens between two souls, and you’re able to communicate with each other no matter where in the world you are. A connection that only becomes stronger as your relationship with your soulmate grows.

But of course, connections can be broken. The same way those dreamlike fantasies of meeting your perfect soulmate don’t always work— especially when your soulmate is Bakugou Katsuki.

The first time you try to communicate with him, he brushes you off. Telling you to “piss off”, that he doesn’t “need a fuckin’ soulmate”. It’s a time in his life that arguably he needs that connection with someone more than ever. But the feelings of inadequacy and inferiority he holds inside are at an all time high as he pushes everyone away, including you. Shutting the door on any hope you had of ever having a connection with him, of finding your soulmate.

You try again a few times after, watching all your friends develop their love and even meet their soulmates. Hating the green-eyed monster that appears when you realise how bitter you actually are— to be paired with someone that has no interest in you. Cursed to be one of the ones without a soulmate, to try and find a love with another broken person like you.

The conversations are always the same— his irritation for your very existence no match for the conversations you try to start. Making it abundantly clear to you that you’re a distraction, that he doesn’t have time for a soulmate. And yet amongst his complaining that you’ve opened the link at a bad moment, or that he doesn’t need you— he always answers.

So over time you find yourself starting to give up, wondering why you’ve wasted so much time on a man that clearly doesn’t want you. The connection going quiet as neither of you try to open the link.

Radio silence.

And what makes it worse, is your friends who have perfect connections pity you. One of the lost souls without a soulmate— which is why you’re prepared to join a special program. A program that can realign your connection— to tie your soul to another.

It’s unorthodox, an extreme measure that has an endless list of side-effects. You could end up with the more undesirable members of society, who’s connections have been severed before, or the ones that abuse the system for their own benefit— and if the second connection doesn’t work out you’re unable to claim a third. But craving that special bond with someone, picturing the perfect smiles and pickett fences it’s more than worth the risks. So you plan to do it— to sever your connection with your soulmate, and find a new one.

Someone who will actually love you.

But it isn’t until one night that you hear something at the back of your mind, barely a murmur as you shoot up in bed. Squinting as you try desperately to focus on the sound— another whimper. But you can’t seem to make out much else, as you realise that it’s the same connection that you thought was completely shattered all those years ago.

“Hello?” You feel almost stupid calling out, wondering if he even realised that you could hear him again— that you were there.

“Long time no talk, hah sweetheart?” He scoffs, a choked cough spills from his lips after as he winces in pain.

“You sound like shit— is that why you reconnected our bond at four am?”

“Must’ve called the wrong number, sweetheart.” He sneers, but you can almost hear the humour in his tone.

“Well luckily for you I’m going to break our bond.” You bite back as you’re met with silence on the other end, “So you won’t have to make the same mistake again.”

“You can do that?” He whispers.

“Yeah, they can reconnect me with someone else.” You murmur.

“They won’t be as good as me.” He manages to get out before another cough wracks through his body.

“I wouldn’t know, would I?” You scrunch your nose in irritation, “But at least they’ll want me.”

“Who said I don’t want you?”

It’s not until a month later that you find out the real reason he reconnected the bond that night. That it was the night that his heart stopped beating as he almost lost his life, his body shutting down as the only thing he could think to do was to call out for you.

[curarems]

Sam Vimes deserves to have a blog. That man spends every second of every day thinking. He has Opinions. His inner monologue is a treat. No no, let him cook. Let him speak

[epicthemusicalstuff]

I’ve been kicked once again from Gartic Phone so I’m going to call it a night! Thank you everyone who played, it was lots of fun! And thank you for putting up with all the technical difficulties!

[callmeurrbunny]

seraphic