#war on general purpose computing

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Autoenshittification

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

What’s more, drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps. Digital systems are drivers’ most significant point of dissatisfaction with the automakers’ products:

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Even the automakers sorta-kinda admit that this is a problem. Back in 2020 when Massachusetts was having a Right-to-Repair ballot initiative, Big Car ran these unfuckingbelievable scare ads that basically said, “Your car spies on you so comprehensively that giving anyone else access to its systems will let murderers stalk you to your home and kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there’s still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who’ve been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability?

Nope. Car execs are sophisticated businesspeople, and they’re surfing capitalism’s latest — and last — hot trend: dismantling capitalism itself.

Now, leftists have been predicting the death of capitalism since The Communist Manifesto, but even Marx and Engels warned us not to get too frisky: capitalism, they wrote, is endlessly creative, constantly reinventing itself, re-emerging from each crisis in a new form that is perfectly adapted to the post-crisis reality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

But capitalism has finally run out of gas. In his forthcoming book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

Under capitalism, capital is the prime mover. The people who own and mobilize capital — the capitalists — organize the economy and take the lion’s share of its returns. But it wasn’t always this way: for hundreds of years, European civilization was dominated by rents, not markets.

A “rent” is income that you get from owning something that other people need to produce value. Think of renting out a house you own: not only do you get paid when someone pays you to live there, you also get the benefit of rising property values, which are the result of the work that all the other homeowners, business owners, and residents do to make the neighborhood more valuable.

The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it.

Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, we live in a rentier’s paradise. People don’t aspire to create value — they aspire to capture it. In Survival of the Richest, Doug Rushkoff calls this “going meta”: don’t provide a service, just figure out a way to interpose yourself between the provider and the customer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don’t drive a cab, create Uber and extract value from every driver and rider. Better still: don’t found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

This is your brain on the four-hour-work-week, passive income mind-virus. In Techno Feudalism, Varoufakis deftly describes how the new “Cloud Capital” has created a new generation of rentiers, and how they have become the richest, most powerful people in human history.

Shopping at Amazon is like visiting a bustling city center full of stores — but each of those stores’ owners has to pay the majority of every sale to a feudal landlord, Emperor Jeff Bezos, who also decides which goods they can sell and where they must appear on the shelves. Amazon is full of capitalists, but it is not a capitalist enterprise. It’s a feudal one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is the reason that automakers are willing to enshittify their products so comprehensively: they were one of the first industries to decouple rents from profits. Recall that the reason that Big Car needed billions in bailouts in 2008 is that they’d reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars, lending money to car-buyers and then “securitizing” the loans so they could be traded in the capital markets.

Even though this strategy brought the car companies to the brink of ruin, it paid off in the long run. The car makers got billions in public money, paid their execs massive bonuses, gave billions to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, smashed their unions, fucked their pensioned workers, and shipped jobs anywhere they could pollute and murder their workforce with impunity.

Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Not to be outdone, Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car’s accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

This is the urinary tract infection business model: without digitization, all your car’s value flowed in a healthy stream. But once the car-makers add semiconductors, each one of those features comes out in a painful, burning dribble, with every button on that fakakta touchscreen wired directly into your credit-card.

But it’s just for starters. Computers are malleable. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. Once they add networked computers to your car, the Car Lords can endlessly twiddle the knobs on the back end, finding new ways to extract value from you:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

That means that your car can track your every movement, and sell your location data to anyone and everyone, from marketers to bounty-hunters looking to collect fees for tracking down people who travel out of state for abortions to cops to foreign spies:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report

Digitization supercharges financialization. It lets car-makers offer subprime auto-loans to desperate, poor people and then killswitch their cars if they miss a payment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

Subprime lending for cars would be a terrible business without computers, but digitization makes it a great source of feudal rents. Car dealers can originate loans to people with teaser rates that quickly blow up into payments the dealer knows their customer can’t afford. Then they repo the car and sell it to another desperate person, and another, and another:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#looking-for-the-joke-with-a-microscope

Digitization also opens up more exotic options. Some subprime cars have secondary control systems wired into their entertainment system: miss a payment and your car radio flips to full volume and bellows an unstoppable, unmutable stream of threats. Tesla does one better: your car will lock and immobilize itself, then blare its horn and back out of its parking spot when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Digital feudalism hasn’t stopped innovating — it’s just stopped innovating good things. The digital device is an endless source of sadistic novelties, like the cellphones that disable your most-used app the first day you’re late on a payment, then work their way down the other apps you rely on for every day you’re late:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Usurers have always relied on this kind of imaginative intimidation. The loan-shark’s arm-breaker knows you’re never going to get off the hook; his goal is in intimidating you into paying his boss first, liquidating your house and your kid’s college fund and your wedding ring before you default and he throws you off a building.

Thanks to the malleability of computerized systems, digital arm-breakers have an endless array of options they can deploy to motivate you into paying them first, no matter what it costs you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Car-makers are trailblazers in imaginative rent-extraction. Take VIN-locking: this is the practice of adding cheap microchips to engine components that communicate with the car’s overall network. After a new part is installed in your car, your car’s computer does a complex cryptographic handshake with the part that requires an unlock code provided by an authorized technician. If the code isn’t entered, the car refuses to use that part.

VIN-locking has exploded in popularity. It’s in your iPhone, preventing you from using refurb or third-party replacement parts:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

It’s in fuckin’ ventilators, which was a nightmare during lockdown as hospital techs nursed their precious ventilators along by swapping parts from dead systems into serviceable ones:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azv9b/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland

And of course, it’s in tractors, along with other forms of remote killswitch. Remember that feelgood story about John Deere bricking the looted Ukrainian tractors whose snitch-chips showed they’d been relocated to Russia?

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

That wasn’t a happy story — it was a cautionary tale. After all, John Deere now controls the majority of the world’s agricultural future, and they’ve boobytrapped those ubiquitous tractors with killswitches that can be activated by anyone who hacks, takes over, or suborns Deere or its dealerships.

Control over repair isn’t limited to gouging customers on parts and service. When a company gets to decide whether your device can be fixed, it can fuck you over in all kinds of ways. Back in 2019, Tim Apple told his shareholders to expect lower revenues because people were opting to fix their phones rather than replace them:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

By usurping your right to decide who fixes your phone, Apple gets to decide whether you can fix it, or whether you must replace it. Problem solved — and not just for Apple, but for car makers, tractor makers, ventilator makers and more. Apple leads on this, even ahead of Big Car, pioneering a “recycling” program that sees trade-in phones shredded so they can’t possibly be diverted from an e-waste dump and mined for parts:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

John Deere isn’t sleeping on this. They’ve come up with a valuable treasure they extract when they win the Right-to-Repair: Deere singles out farmers who complain about its policies and refuses to repair their tractors, stranding them with six-figure, two-ton paperweight:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

The repair wars are just a skirmish in a vast, invisible fight that’s been waged for decades: the War On General-Purpose Computing, where tech companies use the law to make it illegal for you to reconfigure your devices so they serve you, rather than their shareholders:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

The force behind this army is vast and grows larger every day. General purpose computers are antithetical to technofeudalism — all the rents extracted by technofeudalists would go away if others (tinkereres, co-ops, even capitalists!) were allowed to reconfigure our devices so they serve us.

You’ve probably noticed the skirmishes with inkjet printer makers, who can only force you to buy their ink at 20,000% markups if they can stop you from deciding how your printer is configured:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty But we’re also fighting against insulin pump makers, who want to turn people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/10/loopers/#hp-ification

And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It’s called the “shitty technology adoption curve”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Technofeudalism is the public-private-partnership from hell, emerging from a combination of state and private action. On the one hand, bailing out bankers and big business (rather than workers) after the 2008 crash and the covid lockdown decoupled income from profits. Companies spent billions more than they earned were still wildly profitable, thanks to those public funds.

But there’s also a policy dimension here. Some of those rentiers’ billions were mobilized to both deconstruct antitrust law (allowing bigger and bigger companies and cartels) and to expand “IP” law, turning “IP” into a toolsuite for controlling the conduct of a firm’s competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is key to understanding the rise of technofeudalism. The same malleability that allows companies to “twiddle” the knobs on their services and keep us on the hook as they reel us in would hypothetically allow us to countertwiddle, seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

The thing that stands between you and an alternative app store, an interoperable social media network that you can escape to while continuing to message the friends you left behind, or a car that anyone can fix or unlock features for is IP, not technology. Under capitalism, that technology would already exist, because capitalists have no loyalty to one another and view each other’s margins as their own opportunities.

But under technofeudalism, control comes from rents (owning things), not profits (selling things). The capitalist who wants to participate in your iPhone’s “ecosystem” has to make apps and submit them to Apple, along with 30% of their lifetime revenues — they don’t get to sell you jailbreaking kit that lets you choose their app store.

Rent-seeking technology has a holy grail: control over “ring zero” — the ability to compel you to configure your computer to a feudalist’s specifications, and to verify that you haven’t altered your computer after it came into your possession:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/ring-minus-one/#drm-political-economy

For more than two decades, various would-be feudal lords and their court sorcerers have been pitching ways of doing this, of varying degrees of outlandishness.

At core, here’s what they envision: inside your computer, they will nest another computer, one that is designed to run a very simple set of programs, none of which can be altered once it leaves the factory. This computer — either a whole separate chip called a “Trusted Platform Module” or a region of your main processor called a secure enclave — can tally observations about your computer: which operating system, modules and programs it’s running.

Then it can cryptographically “sign” these observations, proving that they were made by a secure chip and not by something you could have modified. Then you can send this signed “attestation” to someone else, who can use it to determine how your computer is configured and thus whether to trust it. This is called “remote attestation.”

There are some cool things you can do with remote attestation: for example, two strangers playing a networked video game together can use attestations to make sure neither is running any cheat modules. Or you could require your cloud computing provider to use attestations that they aren’t stealing your data from the server you’re renting. Or if you suspect that your computer has been infected with malware, you can connect to someone else and send them an attestation that they can use to figure out whether you should trust it.

Today, there’s a cool remote attestation technology called “PrivacyPass” that replaces CAPTCHAs by having you prove to your own device that you are a human. When a server wants to make sure you’re a person, it sends a random number to your device, which signs that number along with its promise that it is acting on behalf of a human being, and sends it back. CAPTCHAs are all kinds of bad — bad for accessibility and privacy — and this is really great.

But the billions that have been thrown at remote attestation over the decades is only incidentally about solving CAPTCHAs or verifying your cloud server. The holy grail here is being able to make sure that you’re not running an ad-blocker. It’s being able to remotely verify that you haven’t disabled the bossware your employer requires. It’s the power to block someone from opening an Office365 doc with LibreOffice. It’s your boss’s ability to ensure that you haven’t modified your messaging client to disable disappearing messages before he sends you an auto-destructing memo ordering you to break the law.

And there’s a new remote attestation technology making the rounds: Google’s Web Environment Integrity, which will leverage Google’s dominance over browsers to allow websites to block users who run ad-blockers:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity

There’s plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It’s a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination.

Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

[Image ID: The interior of a luxury car. There is a dagger protruding from the steering wheel. The entertainment console has been replaced by the text 'You wouldn't download a car,' in MPAA scare-ad font. Outside of the windscreen looms the Matrix waterfall effect. Visible in the rear- and side-view mirror is the driver: the figure from Munch's 'Scream.' The screen behind the steering-wheel has been replaced by the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.']

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

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

#pluralistic #shitty technology adoption curve #unauthorized bread #automotive #arm-breakers #cars #big car #right to repair #rent-seeking #digital feudalism #neofeudalism #drm #wei #remote attestation #private access tokens #yannis varoufakis #web environment integrity #paternalism #war on general purpose computing #competitive compatibility #google #enshittification #interoperability #adversarial interoperability #comcom #the internet con #postcapitalism #ring zero #care #med-tech

[fireflysummers]

FireflySummers’ Guide to Arguing Against the Use of AI Image Generators

(AKA I hate AI image generators so fucking much that I published a whole ass academic article on it)

Read the Paper: Art in the Machine: Value Misalignment and AI "Art"

Citation: Allred, A.M., Aragon, C. (2023). Art in the Machine: Value Misalignment and AI “Art”. In: Luo, Y. (eds) Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering. CDVE 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14166. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43815-8_4

The purpose of the original paper and now this post is the following:

Provide at least one academic article that you can cite. (Full paper + citation available below)

Make explicit community values that have previously been implicit, in order to better examine your own perceptions of the online artist community, and where you sit within it.

Provide rebuttals to common pro-AI talking points, with the intention of shutting down the conversation and reclaiming the narrative. 

What this paper and post cannot do:

Act as a sole authority about the online artist community and its values. We are not a monolith, and it is up to you to think critically about what, exactly, you want to take away from this discussion.

Provide a way to convince AI Evangelists that what they’re doing is wrong and bad and needs to stop. You will never convince them. Again, focus on shutting them down and reclaiming the narrative.

Final Disclaimer: I'm a very fallible researcher who is still very much learning how to do academia. I cannot speak for the entirety of the online artist community or fanartist community. We all have different lived experiences. I have done my best to include diverse voices; however if you have concerns or critiques, I am open to hearing them.

If you show up to debate in favor of AI image generators, you will be automatically blocked.

Credits:

Editors, Meme Experts, and Annotators: @starbeans-bags, @b4kuch1n, @cecilioque.

Tutorial Examples: @sabertoothwalrus, @ash-and-starlight, @miyuliart, @hometownrockstar, @deoidesign, @cinnamonrollbakery

If you have read this far, thank you very much. I hope that you have found a constructive lens for approaching the war with AI image generators, as well as a new tool for shutting down debate and reclaiming the narrative.

#anti ai #fuck ai #fuck ai everything #fuck ai bros #anti ai art #ai is theft #ai is a plague #fandom #fandom research #fanart #my academics #that's a new tag for me #long post

[bots-and-cons]

Yay they are open so how about decepticons dealing with a cybetronian teen who is very violent and has anger issues due to the war

Oh boy, this might be a bit toxic but I do love this concept because of the sort of toxic potential. These are just my honest thoughts about this kind of situation, and how each character would deal with it. Also not all the cons, because I always forget someone and then I don’t feel like adding when I realize it

•Megatron is taking full advantage of your volatile nature and violent tendencies

•He has put you in a lot of dangerous situations on purpose, because he trusts you’re strong/angry enough to win, no matter how badly you get hurt

•You’re a very frequent visitor at the med bay, because of your recklessness and tendency to go way too overboard when you fight

•Knockout has sort of tried to act like a therapist, even though he’s pretty bad at it

•He isn’t really good at dealing with his own emotions either, so he really isn’t much help with yours, even if he tries

•Knockout doesn’t really struggle with anger, but he does have a lot of issues with self loathing, even though he puts up a confident front

•Breakdown thinks you’re more of a funny case, you’re much smaller than him, so even if you’re angry, he has no reason to be intimidated by you

•If you ever get angry at him and come at him, he can just hold you by the helm as you swing your arms without reaching him

•Breakdown usually just laughs, which doesn’t really help with you being angry with him, if anything, it just fuels you

•You have enough self control not to use your blaster, besides, hitting something or someone is much more freeing

•Soundwave honestly doesn’t really pay attention to you, which you’re used to, so you don’t really care

•If you need to talk to him, he will answer you in some way, but if he deems it to be something you should know, he sort of ignores you, or motions you to use the computer yourself and find out

•You’ve also got a lot of guilt about your anger, and even thought a lot of it is directed outwards at others, there’s a ton you of anger you have towards yourself as well

•Starscream is of course also thinking how he can best use your rage for his own purposes

•He kind of uses you as his personal bodyguard, which is only really possible because you have a deal that he gives you certain freedoms on the Nemesis and in general

•Shockwave doesn’t really mind you, as long as you don’t get in his way, or break any of his experiments or anything

•Primus forbid if you get angry and break something important of his, he would probably throw you off the Nemesis or start experimenting on you

•He doesn’t get angry though, or at least he doesn’t show it at all, but he does think you deserve it

•There is no one on the Nemesis who would address the trauma you’d gone through or how bad you’re feeling, because literally none of the decepticons can even acknowledge their own issues

•It’s a very bad situation all around for you, because you’ve grown up with the constant violence, fear and anger and there’s no one who can help you deal with your issues

•I would say a lot of the decepticons struggle with a lot of anger, be it towards each other, the autobots, or themselves

•Pretty much the same for team Prime to be honest, but at least they have Ratchet to help them with their mental health

#transformers #tfp #transformers prime #decepticons #megatron #soundwave #starscream #shockwave #knockout #breakdown #tfp headcanons #reader insert #platonic transformers x reader

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Is Lula Anti-American? It's complicated.

It’s the question in Washington that won’t go away: “Is Lula anti-American?” Since returning to Brazil’s presidency on January 1, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has repeatedly caused alarm in the U.S. capital and elsewhere with his comments on Ukraine, Venezuela, the dollar and other key issues. An unconfirmed GloboNews report in June said President Joe Biden may have abandoned any intentions of visiting Brasilia before the end of the year because of frustration with Lula’s positions.    

The question causes many to roll their eyes, and with good reason. Three decades after the end of the Cold War, some in the United States continue to see Latin America in “You’re either with us or against us” terms. Washington has a long record of getting upset with Brazil’s independent stances on everything from generic AIDS drugs in the 1990s to trade negotiations in the 2000s and the Edward Snowden affair in the 2010s. A large Latin American country confidently operating in its own national interest, neither allied with nor totally against the United States, simply does not compute for some in Washington, and maybe it never will.   

That said, there is a long list of reasonable people in places like the White House and State Department, in think tanks and in the business world who are perfectly capable of understanding nuance — and have still perceived a threat from Lula’s foreign policy in this, his third term. The list of perceived transgressions is long and growing: Lula has repeatedly echoed Russian positions on Ukraine, saying both countries share equal responsibility for the war. In April, Lula said blame for continued hostilities laid “above all” with countries who are providing arms—a slap at the United States and Europe, delivered while on a trip to China, no less. Lula has worked to revive the defunct UNASUR bloc, whose explicit purpose was to counter U.S. influence in South America. He has repeatedly urged countries to shun the U.S. dollar as a mechanism for trade when possible, voicing support for new alternatives including a common currency with Argentina or its other neighbors. Lula has been bitterly critical of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela–”worse than a war,” he has said—while downplaying the repression, torture and other human rights abuses committed by the dictatorship itself.    

For some observers, the inescapable conclusion is that Lula’s foreign policy is not neutral or “non-aligned,” but overtly friendly to Russia and China and hostile to the United States. This has been a particular letdown for many in the Democratic Party who briefly saw Lula as a hero of democracy and natural ally after he, too, defeated an authoritarian, election-denying menace on the far right. And for the record, it’s not just Americans who feel this way: the left-leaning French newspaper Liberation, in a front-page editorial prior to Lula’s visit to Paris in June, called him a “faux friend” of the West.  

To paraphrase the old saying, it’s impossible to know what truly lurks in the hearts of men. But as someone who has tried to understand Lula for the past 20 years, with admittedly mixed results, let me give my best evaluation of what’s really happening: Lula may not be anti-U.S. in the traditional sense, but he is definitely anti-U.S. hegemony, and he is more willing than before to do something about it.  

That is, Lula and his foreign policy team do not wish ill on Washington in the way that Nicolás Maduro or Vladimir Putin do, and in fact they see the United States as a critical partner on issues like climate change, energy and infrastructure investment. But they also believe the U.S.-led global order of the last 30 years has on balance not been good for Brazil or, indeed, the planet as a whole. They are convinced the world is headed toward a new, more equitable “multipolar” era in which, instead of one country at the head of the table, there will be, say, eight countries seated at a round table—and Brazil will be one of them, along with China, India and others from the ascendant Global South. Meanwhile, Lula has lost some of the inhibitions and brakes that held him back a bit during his 2003-10 presidency, and he is actively out there trying to usher the world along to this promising new phase—with an evident enthusiasm and militancy that bothers many in the West, and understandably so. 

Continue reading.

#brazil #politics #brazilian politics #foreign policy #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

[sineala]

Steve/Tony Starter Comics Recs: 2023 Edition

I have been asked this month to talk about essential 616 Steve/Tony comics for a new reader, who is aware of the broadest strokes of their relationship (Civil War, Hickmanvengers) but wanted more context as well as recommendations for the best and/or most essential comics. [This is a repost from Patreon.]

First up, quick advice for newbies getting into Steve/Tony comics: I know there are thousands of comics and trying to figure out what to read is kind of like trying to drink from a firehose. It's going to be okay. You don't have to read everything. You're not going to read everything. Almost no one has read everything. A lot of things flat-out contradict each other. If you're looking to read fanfiction that is close to canon, most fic authors will generally give you an idea of when their stories are set, and you can look the issues up if you want. Or you can just wing it and see how far you get and look something up if you're really confused. That's what I do. Where do you find all these comics? If you are willing to pay money to access comics, the best thing you can do is subscribe to Marvel Unlimited, which is about $10/month and gives you digital access to pretty much every comic that is from more than three months ago. This is the way to go. They also have reading lists for characters and events. And they have recently introduced a line of comics called "Infinity Comics" that are only available though Marvel Unlimited that are designed to be read on your phone -- they're a single long comic that you just scroll through -- and as of right now they have just had a very fun Steve & Tony storyline in Avengers Unlimited. If you have a tablet, a regular-size tablet screen (mine is 9.7") will show you one page at a time, about the size of a regular page in a paper comic, and is definitely the optimal way to go. You can also read on your phone; most of the digital comics on Marvel's app are set up so it zooms in on a panel at a time. You can also read them on a computer, on their website, but the website version is much harder to use. There are a lot of different options for getting comics in paper -- and I'm happy to talk about them if anyone wants to know any of this, especially since some of the reprint lines have changed since the last time I probably made a guide about this. Just let me know. But I think for the newbie, digital is the way to go until you know more about what you like. Then you can fill your house with paper comics. If you are in the US (I cannot vouch for other countries), your local library almost certainly has comics in book form (usually paperbacks collecting multiple issues) and you can read paper comics for completely free. If your library subscribes to Hoopla, you can also read some digital comics for completely free. It's worth checking out. Right. I think that's probably all you need to know about acquiring comics for right now, so onto the recs. I have made some similar lists before. I have a list of essentials I previously made (yes, a lot of them are the same) and I have a flowchart of what the different volumes are. So a lot of this is going to be repeated from previous lists because the old stuff is still relevant. So, since the content will be similar, I thought I would arrange this a little differently than I've done previously, to liven this up. I feel like "best Steve/Tony comics" and "essential Steve/Tony comics" are separate lists with separate purposes, although some of the comics on the list overlap. There are a lot of comics with great Steve/Tony moments that we all love to read and share pictures of and so on and so forth. Like, "One Night in Madripoor." Great comic. A lot of fun. Would definitely recommend. But is it going to show up in fanfiction? Probably not all that much. It's just not a comic that inspires a lot of fic. So it's probably one of the best to read, but it's not essential to know. If you get what I'm saying. (The essential comics are generally also ones that are best to read, so it's really more of a subset/superset relation. Probably.) Okay, yeah, "essential" is basically the angsty shippy stuff and "best" is the fluffy cute shippy stuff. Essential Steve/Tony If you're coming from MCU fandom, the dynamic between 616 Steve, Tony, and the rest of the team may not be what you're expecting. They're not SHIELD's pet superhero project -- they in fact tend to have an uneasy and occasionally adversarial relationship with the government, for all that Tony originally founded SHIELD and Steve often works for them. The Avengers have existed in a world that's basically been full of weird shit for their entire adult lives, and so they've been dealing with it for their entire adult lives. They are seasoned professionals. They are also friends. You know all that 2012 Avengers MCU fic where the Avengers all live together and they eat meals together and they hang out and watch movies together? You know the fanon I mean? That's comics canon. People wrote MCU fic like that because that's exactly what the comics are like and everyone assumed it was going to be similar. The Avengers are also a little more structured than you may be expecting. They've got bylaws and procedures and -- when necessary -- courts-martial. It's also not a case of "Captain America always leads the team." He often does, but not always. He's not the team leader right now (Carol is; before her, it was T'Challa) and in fact he's not even on the team right now. When they started out, they actually rotated the position of team chair; the longest-serving chairs are Steve, Jan, and Natasha, in that order, but I think most of the major Avengers have had a turn at some point. Characters also leave and rejoin the team fairly often; it's unusual for the same lineup to persist for more than a couple years. So Steve's not there right now, but he probably will be again. It doesn't mean they're breaking up forever if someone leaves the team. They'll probably be back. If they're dead they'll also probably be back. The timeline's a mess but basically everyone was in their mid-20s when they started and is going to be in their mid-30s forever, for reasons that are too complicated to go into. So if you're looking for context, here's the best high-level overview I can come up with, focusing on Steve/Tony: The founding Avengers (Iron Man, Thor, Wasp, Ant-Man, and the Hulk, who is retroactively un-foundered) have all been doing the superhero thing on their own for a bit in their solo books when they team up to defeat Loki, decide that they work well together, and decide to form the Avengers (named by Jan). They all move into the mansion. The Hulk then quits the team basically for forever (if you're here from MCU fandom, you should know he's... really not an Avenger) and he disappears, and while the Avengers are out looking for him in a submarine, they instead find a block of ice, containing Captain America, who is miraculously alive. (Iron Man is the first person he sees and also the first person who speaks to him. Fandom likes this.) After saving the Avengers, Steve decides to join the team. The team only remains the same for about twelve issues, at which point all the other founding members decide they need a break while Steve is off on a mission and he gets back to find that they have left him three brand-new Avengers (Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver), all of whom are career criminals. He's not real happy at first. The Avengers' roster changes many times over the years, and Steve and Tony are often but not always on the team together. Highlights in Tony's life include when he gets a heart transplant and no longer has to wear and charge the chestplate to survive, and also when he decides to stop making weapons. Steve quits and becomes Nomad for a few months while he gets over his feelings about the government, because the president of the United States has been conspiring with aliens to take over the world, and then commits suicide, shooting himself in the head right in front of Steve. Understandably, this messes Steve up more than a little. Steve and Tony first get a bit contentious in The Korvac Saga, in which Steve at one point punches Tony (well, Iron Man) in the face. They get over it pretty quickly. Tony develops a drinking problem. Then Tony gets sober, which lasts for a few years. In the intervening time Steve finds out Tony is Iron Man. Then Tony starts drinking again, it gets very bad, Steve is upset, and Tony nearly freezes to death in in a blizzard. Then he gets sober. At this point Tony has quit the main team to join the West Coast Avengers and then Force Works, where he stays for about ten years in real time. So he and Steve are on different teams for quite a while. Then Steve and Tony start to have fights. We get Armor Wars, where Steve disagrees with Tony trying to take back his technology, and we get Operation Galactic Storm, where they disagree about whether the main villain should die. Eventually they make up. They're still not on the same team. Eventually there's a massive plot that involves Tony being a brainwashed murderer, Tony being replaced by his teenage self, Tony dying in Steve's arms, and then everybody dying (except not really) while fighting Onslaught. They come back. Then we get a very nice run where basically Steve and Tony are friends and everyone is on the same team and everyone lives in the mansion and it's great, until Wanda loses her grip on reality, murders a few people, and blows up the mansion. Whoops. But Steve and Tony are still trying. They form the New Avengers together, move into the Tower, and everything is great until Civil War happens, at which point Steve gets killed (Bucky, who just came back to life, becomes Captain America) and Tony spends a lot of comics lying on the floor crying. Many bad things happen, including a Skrull invasion, which Tony doesn't really deal with as well as he could have on account of the lying on the floor crying. Eventually Steve comes back to life, and for Reasons, Tony develops amnesia and has now forgotten the entire Civil War. Steve remembers it, though. They don't immediately get back together. Things are a little rough and Steve isn't on the team because Bucky is still Captain America and Steve is off doing black ops with the Secret Avengers, which he is very bad at and is also depressed about, but eventually comes back, joins the Illuminati, gets the shield back, rejoins the team, and everyone generally has a good time other than the part where Tony has to drink to save the world and also the part where everyone punches the X-Men. Then the multiverse starts ending. Thanks, Jonathan Hickman. For reasons that seem like a good idea at the time, everyone kicks Steve off the Illuminati and then wipes his memory about this. Steve and Tony continue to be BFFs while Tony is lying his face off about this, until Steve remembers this and then attempts to hunt Tony down and kill him, which is complicated by Steve becoming suddenly old and deserumed and Tony becoming evil. Then the multiverse actually ends, a bunch of weird things happen, and then everything on Earth 616 comes back with basically the only difference being that Earth 616 now contains the Ultimate Universe's Miles Morales and the Ultimate Universe's Reed Richards who is a murderous psychopath. No one ever talks about the murdering or the part where the world ended ever again. After that, Tony is no longer evil, but Steve is still old. They aren't on the same team, I don't think -- Tony is main team, Steve is leading the Uncanny Avengers -- but then a Cosmic Cube makes Steve young again, which would be great except for the part where it secretly replaced him with an evil Hydra version of himself who then takes over America. This is a phenomenally unpopular move and this event ends much earlier than Marvel had planned. People tend to like this for villain AU purposes and also the AI version of Tony (because human Tony is in a coma). Also, oh, yeah, Tony finds out he's adopted. He found out a little before this, but now he's found his biological parents. Don't worry, his biological parents hate him too. We've spent the past five years having Jason Aaron's Avengers run which I don't think anyone really liked (it was okay) but at least Steve and Tony were both on the team, a couple of Cap runs with a lot of conspiracy theories in them (IMO, they've both been okay runs but not outstanding), and an Iron Man run where Tony gets addicted to morphine (do not read this run). Steve and Tony are on generally good terms at this point and have not tried to murder each other for years. (The brand-new Avengers run by Jed MacKay is really too new to say much about yet. The new Cap run hasn't started yet and will be by JMS, which I am excited about. The current Iron Man run by Gerry Duggan is absolutely the best IM run I have read in the past ten years.) So if any of that sounds interesting, that would be a place to start. If you're looking to familiarize yourself with comics that will give you the most context for fanfiction, I would recommend Civil War and surrounding events, as well as Hickmanvengers. This is because these two eras have a fair amount of fic about them and they have so much going on that's hard to figure out just by reading fic about it, and a lot of fic will be about the details. Whereas with something like Onslaught, it might get occasionally mentioned but you will probably never need to know anything more than "most of the Avengers died but they didn't really die and then they all came back a year later." So which comics exactly am I recommending, you ask? At some point you should probably read some version of Tony's origin story. The original is in Tales of Suspense #39, but there are a lot of retellings. Many people like the one in Extremis (IM v4 #1-6). Founding: The Avengers form up in Avengers v1 #1. Steve is found in Avengers v1 #4, and he and Tony are on the same team until Avengers #16. After that they are often both on the same team but this is the classic run with the founding Avengers. Heart transplant: This happens in Iron Man v1 #17-19 and Avengers #69. You probably don't actually need to read all this stuff to know what happens, but it's a great arc where a LMD tries to take Tony's place and Tony wanders around in the rain charging his heart from a car battery and then is kidnapped by people who think they are kidnapping the LMD and will train him to replace Tony. Weaponry: Tony stops making weapons in IM v1 #78. Nomad: Cap v1 #176-183. Steve isn't Nomad for very long. But he is in our hearts. Korvac Saga: This is Avengers #167-177. Demon in a Bottle: This is IM v1 #120-128. It's not actually the story whose events you think of when you think about Tony drinking (most people are probably thinking of the second drinking arc) but it is the storyline that first made him an alcoholic. Features Steve teaching Tony self-defense. This is by Layton & Michelinie who are responsible for a lot of fan-favorite classic IM arcs (this, Doomquest, Armor Wars, the introduction of Ghost, the Kathy Dare arc). Steve finds out Tony's secret identity: This is Avengers v1 #216. It involves Molecule Man stripping Tony out of his armor so he's standing there in his underwear. Second drinking arc: This one's the one with the blizzard. This is (most of) Denny O'Neil's run. It lasts from IM #160-200. Yes, it really is forty entire issues. Steve makes an appearance in #172 (the "flophouse" issue. where he has an argument with Tony). The blizzard is in #182. The rest of it is Tony trying to put his life back together. The villain in this one is actually Obadiah Stane; this is where he's from. This is probably my very favorite Iron Man run. I made a reading order for this. While you don't need a reading order for the main arc -- it's just a straight shot through forty issues of Iron Man -- it is referenced in other comics at the time and some of them contain scenes you might want to read. One issue that is not in that list (because I didn't know about it until recently) is Daredevil #204; Denny O'Neil was also writing Daredevil at the same time and he has a very drunk Tony make an appearance at a party Matt is at. Armor Wars: This is IM #225-232. The issue you actually want is #228, which is Steve and Tony having their first big fight. A bond is broken! Operation Galactic Storm: This is a crossover with about 20 issues across multiple comics; you can find a list somewhere. If you read fic where Steve is mad at Tony because Tony wanted to kill the Kree Supreme Intelligence, that's a reference to this arc. The easier option is to skip every issue in this except for the Aftermath issue, which is Cap #401, which features Steve and Tony discussing all the fights they've had. There are apologies. Kaminski IM: Len Kaminski's IM run is #278 to #318 and not all of it is great (however, if you are reading it, it's pretty easy to tell which parts are not great) but there's a lot of flashbacks here to Tony's childhood that often get referred to in fic; if a story has a canon detail about Tony's childhood, there's a pretty good chance it's from this run. 286 has the famed "Stark men are made of iron" flashback. 288, Tony's parents die and he buys the company that made their car and fixes the manufacturing defect. 313, the flashback with Tony taking his first drink, as a child. v3: I'd just like to issue a blanket recommendation for all of Avengers, Cap, and Iron Man volume 3 (this is the 1998 run). This is basically the very last of the classic Avengers dynamic, when everyone was still friends and lived in the mansion. Avengers v3: The first half of the Avengers run is by Busiek and Pérez and is, deservedly, a classic. The second half is perhaps a little less memorable but does contain Red Zone, which features everyone's favorite dramatic moment where Tony removes his helmet and exposes himself to a deadly airborne disease in order to give Steve CPR so Steve can live. No, don't think about the science; just enjoy the entire page of their mouths pressed together. Cap v3: I actually haven't seen much fic about the specifics of this Cap run (people will occasionally mention the part where Steve lost his shield and Tony helped him find the pieces) but it's by Mark Waid and in my opinion contains one of the best modern characterizations of Steve. IM v3: The first 25 issues of this is Busiek's run, which features both Carol's drinking arc and Sunset Bain's appearance in Tony's life. The rest of it has such great moments as the Sentient Armor arc (in which Tony's armor acquires sentience and then tries to kill him) and both DreamVision arcs, which are where Tiberius Stone is introduced. Civil War and surrounding events (CW, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, Siege, Captain America Reborn): This is where I (and a lot of other people) started reading. There's a period of maybe two years of comics including the lead-in to Civil War (mostly the beginning of New Avengers v1 and the beginning of the Iron Man and Cap runs), Civil War itself, Steve's death, then the events Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, and Siege. Then Steve comes back to life. Even if you read none of the rest of this you absolutely have to read "Civil War: Casualties of War" and "Civil War: The Confession." The Confession is why we have a Steve/Tony fandom in the first place. I have a reading list for this, but please make sure to read those two comics. Avengers v4: The last of Bendis' Avengers runs (he started with New Avengers and then basically wrote every Avengers book for like seven or eight years); this is basically the story of Steve and Tony trying to figure out how to be friends again after Civil War. The era opens with Avengers Prime, which is a great miniseries featuring a truly epic Steve/Tony hug, and then about two-thirds of the run is Steve and Tony having screaming fights in front of all their friends, and then Steve gets to be Captain America again and rejoins the team and then everyone is friends until Hickman takes over. Hickman (Avengers v5 & New Avengers v3): The epic saga of Tony betraying Steve and then the entire multiverse ending. If you're going to read any of this, this is about 100 issues long and you have to read all of it in a very precise order (reading both series at the same time) or it will make almost no sense. Steve gets old. You probably will want to read Superior Iron Man, in which Tony is temporarily evil. Then the multiverse, in fact, ends. Then Secret Wars happens, but Steve and Tony aren't there. I also have a reading list for this run. Secret Empire and surrounding events (Standoff, Civil War II, Secret Empire): So after the multiverse stops ending (everything's fine, don't worry about it) and Tony stops being evil, we get the event Standoff, where Steve is young again but is secretly evil (he is replaced by a Hydra version of himself), and he continues being secretly evil throughout the events of Civil War II, which this time is Carol vs. Tony and Tony ends up in a coma. The one thing you will absolutely want to read is Civil War II: The Oath, an epilogue issue in which Steve villain-monologues at Tony's comatose body and tells him that Real Steve always loved him. Then Secret Empire happens, and Steve decides to be openly evil and take over America. Tony is an AI. Eventually Evil Steve is defeated and Real Steve comes back. I think that's about it for what Steve/Tony fandom considers to be important angsty events. There's been more recent good stuff, I promise, but it's all mostly been fluffy, in the sense that Steve and Tony haven't fought each other since then and nobody's died. I mean, not permanently. Best Steve/Tony (that isn't already essential) And now the fluff. I mean, it's not entirely fluff. I put 1872 on here. In my defense, I think a lot of the 1872 fic that gets written is fluff and/or fix-its. Tales of Suspense #58: Tales of Suspense, the comic book that Iron Man debuted in in #39, became primarily an Iron Man comic book for nearly twenty issues after that. But starting with #58, he shared the book with Captain America -- every issue from #59 to #99 (when the book ended) had one IM story and one Cap story, but not related to each other, just two separate stories in the same comic. The exception to this is #58 here, a story about both Steve and Tony, in which Steve is impersonated by the Chameleon. Tony at first thinks Steve is in trouble, and then he tries to chase him down -- but he ends up chasing the real Steve. Whoops. (This is one of the stories mentioned in Civil War: Casualties of War.) Tales of Suspense vol 2 #1 (1994 one-shot): Better known in fandom as "the azure eyes" issue, this is a Steve & Tony team-up where they've been on the outs for no reason I can determine but they have to work with each other and learn to be friends again. There are two pages that are Steve and Tony's interior monologues about each other and how they both think the other one is amazing and way better than them. (Tony is particularly fond of Steve's eyes, hence the fandom name for the issue.) Captain America & Iron Man 1998 Annual: This is technically part of my blanket v3 rec but I'd like to mention it specifically here. It's a standalone team-up issue where for Reasons, Tony decides to give Steve some amnesia, but they eventually make up and are friends again and it's very sweet by the end. Captain America & Iron Man: Invasion Force: This is an obscure internet-only team-up comic (you can find it on YouTube in four parts) which includes, among other things, Steve joking about Tony's dick and Tony, in response, offering to make Steve a sex tape. No, really. Captain America: Man Out of Time: This is generally my first rec to everyone; it's a modern retelling of Steve's origin story with some cute Steve/Tony moments and the addition of giving Steve a choice about whether to stay in the future. One Night in Madripoor: Technically, this storyline is Captain America & Iron Man #633-635; "one night in Madripoor" is on the cover of the first issue. This is some excellent Steve & Tony shenanigans in Madripoor with a lot of great banter. Avengers Annual vol 5: This is the annual from Hickman's run, but it's not by Hickman. It's a Christmas story and it's also the story that features the panel where Tony has made Steve's password "Captain Handsome." Avengers: Endless Wartime: The overall plot in this graphic novel is not at all what I would call fluffy but if you pretend that the only panel that exists is the one where Tony calls Steve "beloved" then it's pretty good. I don't recommend paying more than about five dollars for this. 1872: This is one of the AUs from Secret Wars, a Wild West world where Steve is the sheriff and Tony is the town drunk. Yes, I know 1872 is not fluffy. I know Steve is eaten alive by pigs in issue #2. However, there are some really sweet Steve & Tony moments in the first issue and I think most of the fic is a little softer than canon. Captain America/Iron Man (miniseries): This is a relatively recent (2021) team-up miniseries. Five glorious issues of Steve and Tony fighting villains, bantering, and also being really nice to each other. Avengers Annual 2021: This is the last annual in the Infinite Destinies annual series and it's basically "Steve and Tony hang out at home together and work out together and Steve feeds Tony his own breakfast and then they go fight a robot who makes them fight projections of each other because it knows they are weak for each other." Avengers Unlimited #52-54: Civil Score: New as of last month, this is a fun storyline where Steve and Tony attempt to steal a flash drive from the Serpent Society at a fancy party except they're both trying to get it before the other one does. (The very first issue of Avengers Unlimited is also worth a look, because it features Steve and Tony teaming up to fight Ghost and Taskmaster, and Taskmaster stops Steve's heart and Tony has to put Steve in his armor. It is some great h/c.) That's all I can think of! I'm sure I've missed some. I hope this gives you a place to start.

#posts i actually wrote #comics reading lists

[treasure-mimic]

Despite the fact that NFTs have completely crashed and thus have become uncool to talk about, you can see a lot of the same ideology in where these web3 hype creators have moved to next. They’ve changed the language, but the desired outcome is the same.

I don’t want to paint all AI optimists with the same brush because the technology has potential for certain, specific things, but when people talk about using AI as a tool for creation, as something that can replace the function of artists and creators, it comes from the same hypercapitalist want to commodify, own, and consume.

It’s a confusing position to look at from the perspective of the creator, an AI does not create with intent or purpose, it cannot comprehend things like, themes, motifs, color schemes, metaphorical imagery. When someone says you can use AI to expand the Mona Lisa to see more of the background, a creator finds the concept baffling, that’s not the actual background of the Mona Lisa, it’s just a computer code generating pixels that make sense to sit next to the pixels beside it. But from the perspective of those excited by this prospect, the appeal is that there’s more of the Mona Lisa to own.

This is, ultimately, for the purpose of profit. If the Mona Lisa is bigger, if it has more art in it, then it is surely worth more. But, beyond that, I think these people just love to be a part of this system, whether they’re on top of it or not. They want to consume so wholeheartedly that they don’t really care about the product being consumed, just that the technology allows for more avenues of consumption. If Star Wars releases 20 new canon novels generated by AI, then they will buy these novels and treat the text as authoritative, because spending money on it, consuming the material, signifies the want to consume to other consumers and signifies their priorities through consumption. Star Wars is important to me, you can tell because I own all these books and know what they say. AI generation, automated content creation, allows for the culmination of a dream of regular, standardized consumption without needing to worry about things like authorial intent, the working conditions of creators, or conflicting views over what the content should mean.

[magnetarbeam]

I think a lot about Star Wars technology as it relates to the stylistic schemes of the story, and what they can do with the technology compared to what it would be thematically fitting for us to see them do.

This isn't exactly something I've gone out of my way to research, but the impression I generally have is that in the time that the OT was coming out, the visuals were meant to be believable to the viewers at that time, with the technological frame of reference of the 1970s and 1980s, when people couldn't even fathom that we might one day have real-world datapads.

More recently, as technological accelerationism has increasingly taken hold in our society, I think the idea has become more "Star Wars is an interstellar society, so it doesn't make sense for them not to always use all the devices we invent to make our lives easier, and more."

And I don't think that's exactly right. As far as I can figure it, that civilization's frame of reference for these things is probably very different from ours. The Galactic Republic was founded 25053 years before the Battle of Yavin. They've had this same technological base far longer than even their longest-lived member species can remember. The galaxy has had far more than enough time to collectively realize what Earth hasn't, which is that a more complex system has more points of failure, and this shit is such old news to them that they're not excited by the idea of using it to make their lives easier, like we are.

Like, digital graphics displays for us get higher-resolution all the time just because we can. Those same displays in Star Wars look like garbage to us because they don't need that level of detail to serve their purpose.

I have absolutely no doubt that the people in that galaxy could make an Alexa or what have you. But if those people were presented with the idea, I think instead of "Ooo, it makes things easier because I can talk to it from anywhere," their first thought, as a collective cultural outlook, would be "I can do those same things perfectly fine by walking over to a computer and doing it myself."

#star wars #technology #opinions that will probably cost me followers

[elderberries-and-honey]

Hello! I'm Scout, 28, they/she, wcif friendly! Currently, I'm posting The Baudelaire Legacy and The Joy of Life Challenge.

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𝐍𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍,

🎠𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐔𝐃𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐄 𝐋𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐂𝐘

A decades challenge inspired historical drama. *pose heavy, multi-para length posts, storytelling. Disclaimer: I try to approach historical storytelling as realistically as possible and research what I can, however, sometimes for the sake of the plot, or limitations by the game, there will be anachronisms. As such, there will be discussion of or relating to the following: Sex, Gender, Race, Class Differences, Politics, Blood / Injury, Illness, Religion, Mental Health, Grief, Death, War, Child Loss & Other Adult Themes. CURRENT DECADE: 1890 STATUS: On Hiatus ⋆୨୧˚ chrono // recent // beginning ⋆୨୧˚ characters [under co!] // family tree // family portraits // misc extras ⋆୨୧˚ by decade: 1890

🎪 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐉𝐎𝐘 𝐎𝐅 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐄

A modern!au version of The Baudelaires, following tjolc. *mostly gameplay with some light posing, usually short captions, storytelling. Disclaimer: Even though this story relies mostly on gameplay, there will be mention of religion, drugs, sex, & mods I use have the potential for pregnancy loss, cheating & infidelity, & other adult themes. CURRENT GENERATION: Gen 01 - The Baking Extraordinaire STATUS: Ongoing ⋆୨୧˚ chrono // recent // beginning ⋆୨୧˚ characters [under co!] // family tree [under co!] // misc extras ⋆୨୧˚ by generation: gen 01

#navigation

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

Hi, I think I am running into an issue of being consistent in my world in what things are possible and what things are not possible. Like, one world can do spacesuits that look almost identical to thin raincoats except they enclose the entire body and well obviously connected to oxygen tanks and such, which are no bigger than a couple CD cases. What other technology should I expect them to have and not write them as being unable to have technology that should be possible once they have the above type of spacesuit. Like having very cumbersome firefighting gear with heat protection that is woefully underdeveloped for a civilisation that can already develop such spacesuits. Though perhaps, that could in fact be explained by money and amount required? A billion firefighters but less than 200 astronauts. That's just one example of course but I think my story is riddled with things like this that doesn't seem to make much sense I guess? How do I approach this?

Tex: If you already have a couple sets of tech that your world is using, it’s generally helpful to examine how that technology would be made and break it down into its component parts. For example, your space suit has a material that can conform to a body shape, so it might be some form of memory material or possibly integrated with a program to reshape itself. The oxygen tanks are incredibly compact - how do they cycle its input, and what does it do with the waste material?

How efficient are these technologies, how are the component materials produced? What other ways can each component piece of technology also be used for? What are the goals of each component, and what were the lead-up inventions that developed each system?

Licorice: Let’s not forget, it’s realistic for worlds to be inconsistent with their tech. In our own world, we are building quantum computers and can edit genes, yet small children still die of preventable or easily curable diseases. In our world, tech doesn’t ‘migrate’ from one sector to another unless there is money to be made from it. 

As well as the tech itself, one needs to consider who owns it, why it was developed, who’s paying for it, and what community is being served. If the owner of a fabulously wealthy tech-based multinational is paying for the space suits, whereas the firemen work in shanty towns and are paid by subscriptions from the community they serve - well, there's going to be a huge gap in the funds available to pay for the latest tech.

While it is true that we tend to develop tech to solve problems, there are plenty of problem we don’t bother to create tech for - and sometimes there’s a problem, and a small band of dedicated people develop the tech to deal with it, and then nobody has any interest in developing that tech to the point where it has real use in practical applications. 

When considering technology, we need to think not only about the tech itself, but the nature of the society that is creating it. What do they think is important? What are their priorities? 

For example, during 'the space race' some of the tech NASA developed was top secret due to the Cold War also being a thing happening at that time, but plenty of other tech was released for commercial purposes. If you're in Communist Russia, the average person may never benefit from space tech because the central planners of the economy don’t see what the USSR would gain from doing that, whereas if you’re in 1960s USA, capitalism is going to make some of that advanced tech available to consumers, for a price. The consumers here may be private individuals, or private companies, or public institutions. 

Addy: So, first off oxygen/pressure manipulation is different from insulation. If you look at the purpose of an object, as well as what kinds of things need to go into achieving that purpose, you have more room to handwave than if you try to apply a single consistent "tech level." 

Continuing on the firefighter example. Oxygen and other gasses can be compressed, but liquids generally can't. If you're mixing some kind of aerosol spray with a liquid carrier that then expands into a firefighting foam, that could mean you need bulky tanks. If you want insulation, that could mean thick suits to buy them more time, especially if you have them also dealing with super-hot wildfires or chemical spills. More layers, more material to absorb the heat before it reaches the skin… like how thick sweaters are better at blocking the cold (and keeping heat in) compared to a thinner t-shirt. 

Internal consistency can, to a point, be worked with if you look at differences in base requirements. Space doesn't really have much of a temperature, so you're mostly looking at life-support and radiation-blocking capabilities. For the sets of tech you have, what needs do they address? How can they be used for other things?

You also mention cost, which is a huge factor in real-life development. Making fancy materials is expensive, and it gets even more expensive if you need them • to a very tight tolerance • custom-made into certain shapes (such as for each astronaut) • or both of those. A custom-made bespoke suit may cost several thousand dollars, but a suit off the rack is going to be much more affordable.

Sure, you could make every firefighter suit custom-molded to each person's body, but what if they retire or gain/lose weight? Or if they transfer stations and need new badges? Also, are you really going to see a large benefit if you do that vs if you do a standard array of S/M/L/etc? Not really, tbh. The cost of customization isn't worth the added benefit of a custom fit. (Especially for a town, which has a smaller budget than a federal government)

I see it kinda like asking why, in our modern day, you don't see everyone wearing Rolexes or Armani, or why some people have gas-powered cars when electric cars exist. Or why some people don't have access to cars at all.

The big question isn't that the materials for the spacesuits can be made, it's how much making those costs. The world is not a homogenous thing.

So if you're looking at things that seem inconsistent, look at the factors driving the development of those things. What's the motive? And who's paying the cost of that development?

#google submitted #technology

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Forcing your computer to rat you out

Powerful people imprisoned by the cluelessness of their own isolation, locked up with their own motivated reasoning: “It’s impossible to get a CEO to understand something when his quarterly earnings call depends on him not understanding it.”

Take Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg insists that anyone who wanted to use a pseudonym online is “two-faced,” engaged in dishonest social behavior. The Zuckerberg Doctrine claims that forcing people to use their own names is a way to ensure civility. This is an idea so radioactively wrong, it can be spotted from orbit.

From the very beginning, social scientists (both inside and outside Facebook) told Zuckerberg that he was wrong. People have lots of reasons to hide their identities online, both good and bad, but a Real Names Policy affects different people differently:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/01/22/social-scientists-have-warned-zuck-all-along-that-the-facebook-theory-of-interaction-would-make-people-angry-and-miserable/

For marginalized and at-risk people, there are plenty of reasons to want to have more than one online identity — say, because you are a #MeToo whistleblower hoping that Harvey Weinstein won’t sic his ex-Mossad mercenaries on you:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies

Or maybe you’re a Rohingya Muslim hoping to avoid the genocidal attentions of the troll army that used Facebook to organize — under their real, legal names — to rape and murder you and everyone you love:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/

But even if no one is looking to destroy your life or kill you and your family, there are plenty of good reasons to present different facets of your identity to different people. No one talks to their lover, their boss and their toddler in exactly the same way, or reveals the same facts about their lives to those people. Maintaining different facets to your identity is normal and healthy — and the opposite, presenting the same face to everyone in your life, is a wildly terrible way to live.

None of this is controversial among social scientists, nor is it hard to grasp. But Zuckerberg stubbornly stuck to this anonymity-breeds-incivility doctrine, even as dictators used the fact that Facebook forced dissidents to use their real names to retain power through the threat (and reality) of arrest and torture:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/25/nationalize-moderna/#hun-sen

Why did Zuck cling to this dangerous and obvious fallacy? Because the more he could collapse your identity into one unitary whole, the better he could target you with ads. Truly, it is impossible to get a billionaire to understand something when his mega-yacht depends on his not understanding it.

This motivated reasoning ripples through all of Silicon Valley’s top brass, producing what Anil Dash calls “VC QAnon,” the collection of conspiratorial, debunked and absurd beliefs embraced by powerful people who hold the digital lives of billions of us in their quivering grasp:

https://www.anildash.com/2023/07/07/vc-qanon/

These fallacy-ridden autocrats like to disguise their demands as observations, as though wanting something to be true was the same as making it true. Think of when Eric Schmidt — then the CEO of Google — dismissed online privacy concerns, stating “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy

Schmidt was echoing the sentiments of his old co-conspirator, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it”:

https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/

Both men knew better. Schmidt, in particular, is very jealous of his own privacy. When Cnet reporters used Google to uncover and publish public (but intimate and personal) facts about Schmidt, Schmidt ordered Google PR to ignore all future requests for comment from Cnet reporters:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/how-cnet-got-banned-by-google/

(Like everything else he does, Elon Musk’s policy of responding to media questions about Twitter with a poop emoji is just him copying things other people thought up, making them worse, and taking credit for them:)

https://www.theverge.com/23815634/tesla-elon-musk-origin-founder-twitter-land-of-the-giants

Schmidt’s actions do not reflect an attitude of “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Rather, they are the normal response that we all have to getting doxed.

When Schmidt and McNealy and Zuck tell us that we don’t have privacy, or we don’t want privacy, or that privacy is bad for us, they’re disguising a demand as an observation. “Privacy is dead” actually means, “When privacy is dead, I will be richer than you can imagine, so stop trying to save it, goddamnit.”

We are all prone to believing our own bullshit, but when a tech baron gets high on his own supply, his mental contortions have broad implications for all of us. A couple years after Schmidt’s anti-privacy manifesto, Google launched Google Plus, a social network where everyone was required to use their “real name.”

This decision — justified as a means of ensuring civility and a transparent ruse to improve ad targeting — kicked off the Nym Wars:

https://epeus.blogspot.com/2011/08/google-plus-must-stop-this-identity.html

One of the best documents to come out of that ugly conflict is “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names,” a profound and surprising enumeration of all the ways that the experiences of tech bros in Silicon Valley are the real edge-cases, unreflective of the reality of billions of their users:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

This, in turn, spawned a whole genre of programmer-fallacy catalogs, falsehoods programmers believe about time, currency, birthdays, timezones, email addresses, national borders, nations, biometrics, gender, language, alphabets, phone numbers, addresses, systems of measurement, and, of course, families:

https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

But humility is in short supply in tech. It’s impossible to get a programmer to understand something when their boss requires them not to understand it. A programmer will happily insist that ordering you to remove your “mask” is for your own good — and not even notice that they’re taking your skin off with it.

There are so many ways that tech executives could improve their profits if only we would abandon our stubborn attachment to being so goddamned complicated. Think of Netflix and its anti-passsword-sharing holy war, which is really a demand that we redefine “family” to be legible and profitable for Netflix:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

But despite the entreaties of tech companies to collapse our identities, our families, and our online lives into streamlined, computably hard-edged shapes that fit neatly into their database structures, we continue to live fuzzy, complicated lives that only glancingly resemble those of the executives seeking to shape them.

Now, the rich, powerful people making these demands don’t plan on being constrained by them. They are conservatives, in the tradition of #FrankWilhoit, believers in a system of “in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect”:

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

As with Schmidt’s desire to spy on you from asshole to appetite for his own personal gain, and his violent aversion to having his own personal life made public, the tech millionaires and billionaires who made their fortune from the flexibility of general purpose computers would like to end that flexibility. They insist that the time for general purpose computers has passed, and that today, “consumers” crave the simplicity of appliances:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

It is in the War On General Purpose Computing that we find the cheapest and flimsiest rhetoric. Companies like Apple — and their apologists — insist that no one wants to use third-party app stores, or seek out independent repair depots — and then spend millions to make sure that it’s illegal to jailbreak your phone or get it fixed outside of their own official channel:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

The cognitive dissonance of “no one wants this,” and “we must make it illegal to get this” is powerful, but the motivated reasoning is more powerful still. It is impossible to get Tim Cook to understand something when his $49 million paycheck depends on him not understanding it.

The War on General Purpose Computing has been underway for decades. Computers, like the people who use them, stubbornly insist on being reality-based, and the reality of computers is that they are general purpose. Every computer is a Turing complete, universal Von Neumann machine, which means that it can run every valid program. There is no way to get a computer to be almost Turing Complete, only capable of running programs that don’t upset your shareholders’ fragile emotional state.

There is no such thing as a printer that will only run the “reject third-party ink” program. There is no such thing as a phone that will only run the “reject third-party apps” program. There are only laws, like the Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that make writing and distributing those programs a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine (for a first offense).

That is to say, the War On General Purpose Computing is only incidentally a technical fight: it is primarily a legal fight. When Apple says, “You can’t install a third party app store on your phone,” what they means is, “it’s illegal to install that third party app store.” It’s not a technical countermeasure that stands between you and technological self-determination, it’s a legal doctrine we can call “felony contempt of business model”:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

But the mighty US government will not step in to protect a company’s business model unless it at least gestures towards the technical. To invoke DMCA 1201, a company must first add the thinnest skin of digital rights management to their product. Since 1201 makes removing DRM illegal, a company can use this molecule-thick scrim of DRM to felonize any activity that the DRM prevents.

More than 20 years ago, technologists started to tinker with ways to combine the legal and technical to tame the wild general purpose computer. Starting with Microsoft’s Palladium project, they theorized a new “Secure Computing” model for allowing companies to reach into your computer long after you had paid for it and brought it home, in order to discipline you for using it in ways that undermined its shareholders’ interest.

Secure Computing began with the idea of shipping every computer with two CPUs. The first one was the normal CPU, the one you interacted with when you booted it up, loaded your OS, and ran programs. The second CPU would be a Trusted Platform Module, a brute-simple system-on-a-chip designed to be off-limits to modification, even by its owner (that is, you).

The TPM would ship with a limited suite of simple programs it could run, each thoroughly audited for bugs, as well as secret cryptographic signing keys that you were not permitted to extract. The original plan called for some truly exotic physical security measures for that TPM, like an acid-filled cavity that would melt the chip if you tried to decap it or run it through an electron-tunneling microscope:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

This second computer represented a crack in the otherwise perfectly smooth wall of a computer’s general purposeness; and Trusted Computing proposed to hammer a piton into that crack and use it to anchor a whole superstructure that could observe — and limited — the activity of your computer.

This would start with observation: the TPM would observe every step of your computer’s boot sequence, creating cryptographic hashes of each block of code as it loaded and executed. Each stage of the boot-up could be compared to “known good” versions of those programs. If your computer did something unexpected, the TPM could halt it in its tracks, blocking the boot cycle.

What kind of unexpected things do computers do during their boot cycle? Well, if your computer is infected with malware, it might load poisoned versions of its operating system. Once your OS is poisoned, it’s very hard to detect its malicious conduct, since normal antivirus programs rely on the OS to faithfully report what your computer is doing. When the AV program asks the OS to tell it which programs are running, or which files are on the drive, it has no choice but to trust the OS’s response. When the OS is compromised, it can feed a stream of lies to users’ programs, assuring these apps that everything is fine.

That’s a very beneficial use for a TPM, but there’s a sinister flipside: the TPM can also watch your boot sequence to make sure that there aren’t beneficial modifications present in your operating system. If you modify your OS to let you do things the manufacturer wants to prevent — like loading apps from a third-party app-store — the TPM can spot this and block it.

Now, these beneficial and sinister uses can be teased apart. When the Palladium team first presented its research, my colleague Seth Schoen proposed an “owner override”: a modification of Trusted Computing that would let the computer’s owner override the TPM:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021004125515/http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/2002-07-05.html

This override would introduce its own risks, of course. A user who was tricked into overriding the TPM might expose themselves to malicious software, which could harm that user, as well as attacking other computers on the user’s network and the other users whose data were on the compromised computer’s drive.

But an override would also provide serious benefits: it would rule out the monopolistic abuse of a TPM to force users to run malicious code that the manufacturer insisted on — code that prevented the user from doing things that benefited the user, even if it harmed the manufacturer’s shareholders. For example, with owner override, Microsoft couldn’t force you to use its official MS Office programs rather than third-party compatible programs like Apple’s iWork or Google Docs or LibreOffice.

Owner override also completely changed the calculus for another, even more dangerous part of Trusted Computing: remote attestation.

Remote Attestation is a way for third parties to request a reliable, cryptographically secured assurances about which operating system and programs your computer is running. In Remote Attestation, the TPM in your computer observes every stage of your computer’s boot, gathers information about all the programs you’re running, and cryptographically signs them, using the signing keys the manufacturer installed during fabrication.

You can send this “attestation” to other people on the internet. If they trust that your computer’s TPM is truly secure, then they know that you have sent them a true picture of your computer’s working (the actual protocol is a little more complicated and involves the remote party sending you a random number to cryptographically hash with the attestation, to prevent out-of-date attestations).

Now, this is also potentially beneficial. If you want to make sure that your technologically unsophisticated friend is running an uncompromised computer before you transmit sensitive data to it, you can ask them for an attestation that will tell you whether they’ve been infected with malware.

But it’s also potentially very sinister. Your government can require all the computers in its borders to send a daily attestation to confirm that you’re still running the mandatory spyware. Your abusive spouse — or abusive boss — can do the same for their own disciplinary technologies. Such a tool could prevent you from connecting to a service using a VPN, and make it impossible to use Tor Browser to protect your privacy when interacting with someone who wishes you harm.

The thing is, it’s completely normal and good for computers to lie to other computers on behalf of their owners. Like, if your IoT ebike’s manufacturer goes out of business and all their bikes get bricked because they can no longer talk to their servers, you can run an app that tricks the bike into thinking that it’s still talking to the mothership:

https://nltimes.nl/2023/07/15/alternative-app-can-unlock-vanmoof-bikes-popular-amid-bankruptcy-fears

Or if you’re connecting to a webserver that tries to track you by fingerprinting you based on your computer’s RAM, screen size, fonts, etc, you can order your browser to send random data about this stuff:

https://jshelter.org/fingerprinting/

Or if you’re connecting to a site that wants to track you and nonconsensually cram ads into your eyeballs, you can run an adblocker that doesn’t show you the ads, but tells the site that it did:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Owner override leaves some of the beneficial uses of remote attestation intact. If you’re asking a friend to remotely confirm that your computer is secure, you’re not going to use an override to send them bad data about about your computer’s configuration.

And owner override also sweeps all of the malicious uses of remote attestation off the board. With owner override, you can tell any lie about your computer to a webserver, a site, your boss, your abusive spouse, or your government, and they can’t spot the lie.

But owner override also eliminates some beneficial uses of remote attestation. For example, owner override rules out remote attestation as a way for strangers to play multiplayer video games while confirming that none of them are using cheat programs (like aimhack). It also means that you can’t use remote attestation to verify the configuration of a cloud server you’re renting in order to assure yourself that it’s not stealing your data or serving malware to your users.

This is a tradeoff, and it’s a tradeoff that’s similar to lots of other tradeoffs we make online, between the freedom to do something good and the freedom to do something bad. Participating anonymously, contributing to free software, distributing penetration testing tools, or providing a speech platform that’s open to the public all represent the same tradeoff.

We have lots of experience with making the tradeoff in favor of restrictions rather than freedom: powerful bad actors are happy to attach their names to their cruel speech and incitement to violence. Their victims are silenced for fear of that retaliation.

When we tell security researchers they can’t disclose defects in software without the manufacturer’s permission, the manufacturers use this as a club to silence their critics, not as a way to ensure orderly updates.

When we let corporations decide who is allowed to speak, they act with a mixture of carelessness and self-interest, becoming off-the-books deputies of authoritarian regimes and corrupt, powerful elites.

Alas, we made the wrong tradeoff with Trusted Computing. For the past twenty years, Trusted Computing has been creeping into our devices, albeit in somewhat denatured form. The original vision of acid-filled secondary processors has been replaced with less exotic (and expensive) alternatives, like “secure enclaves.” With a secure enclave, the manufacturer saves on the expense of installing a whole second computer, and instead, they draw a notional rectangle around a region of your computer’s main chip and try really hard to make sure that it can only perform a very constrained set of tasks.

This gives us the worst of all worlds. When secure enclaves are compromised, we not only lose the benefit of cryptographic certainty, knowing for sure that our computers are only booting up trusted, unalterted versions of the OS, but those compromised enclaves run malicious software that is essentially impossible to detect or remove:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh

But while Trusted Computing has wormed its way into boot-restrictions — preventing you from jailbreaking your computer so it will run the OS and apps of your choosing — there’s been very little work on remote attestation…until now.

Web Environment Integrity is Google’s proposal to integrate remote attestation into everyday web-browsing. The idea is to allow web-servers to verify what OS, extensions, browser, and add-ons your computer is using before the server will communicate with you:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md

Even by the thin standards of the remote attestation imaginaries, there are precious few beneficial uses for this. The googlers behind the proposal have a couple of laughable suggestions, like, maybe if ad-supported sites can comprehensively refuse to serve ad-blocking browsers, they will invest the extra profits in making things you like. Or: letting websites block scriptable browsers will make it harder for bad people to auto-post fake reviews and comments, giving users more assurances about the products they buy.

But foundationally, WEI is about compelling you to disclose true facts about yourself to people who you want to keep those facts from. It is a Real Names Policy for your browser. Google wants to add a new capability to the internet: the ability of people who have the power to force you to tell them things to know for sure that you’re not lying.

The fact that the authors assume this will be beneficial is just another “falsehood programmers believe”: there is no good reason to hide the truth from other people. Squint a little and we’re back to McNealy’s “Privacy is dead, get over it.” Or Schmidt’s “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

And like those men, the programmers behind this harebrained scheme don’t imagine that it will ever apply to them. As Chris Palmer — who worked on Chromium — points out, this is not compatible with normal developer tools or debuggers, which are “incalculably valuable and not really negotiable”:

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/Ux5h_kGO22g/m/5Lt5cnkLCwAJ

This proposal is still obscure in the mainstream, but in tech circles, it has precipitated a flood of righteous fury:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/

As I wrote last week, giving manufacturers the power to decide how your computer is configured, overriding your own choices, is a bad tradeoff — the worst tradeoff, a greased slide into terminal enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

All of which leads to the question: what now? What should be done about WEI and remote attestation?

Let me start by saying: I don’t think it should be illegal for programmers to design and release these tools. Code is speech, and we can’t understand how this stuff works if we can’t study it.

But programmers shouldn’t deploy it in production code, in the same way that programmers should be allowed to make pen-testing tools, but shouldn’t use them to attack production systems and harm their users. Programmers who do this should be criticized and excluded from the society of their ethical, user-respecting peers.

Corporations that use remote attestation should face legal restrictions: privacy law should prevent the use of remote attestation to compel the production of true facts about users or the exclusion of users who refuse to produce those facts. Unfair competition law should prevent companies from using remote attestation to block interoperability or tie their products to related products and services.

Finally, we must withdraw the laws that prevent users and programmers from overriding TPMs, secure enclaves and remote attestations. You should have the right to study and modify your computer to produce false attestations, or run any code of your choosing. Felony contempt of business model is an outrage. We should alter or strike down DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and other laws (like contract law’s “tortious interference”) that stand between you and “sole and despotic dominion” over your own computer. All of that applies not just to users who want to reconfigure their own computers, but also toolsmiths who want to help them do so, by offering information, code, products or services to jailbreak and alter your devices.

Tech giants will squeal at this, insisting that they serve your interests when they prevent rivals from opening up their products. After all, those rivals might be bad guys who want to hurt you. That’s 100% true. What is likewise true is that no tech giant will defend you from its own bad impulses, and if you can’t alter your device, you are powerless to stop them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Companies should be stopped from harming you, but the right place to decide whether a business is doing something nefarious isn’t in the boardroom of that company’s chief competitor: it’s in the halls of democratically accountable governments:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

So how do we get there? Well, that’s another matter. In my next book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso Books, Sept 5), I lay out a detailed program, describing which policies will disenshittify the internet, and how to get those policies:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

Predictably, there are challenges getting this kind of book out into the world via our concentrated tech sector. Amazon refuses to carry the audio edition on its monopoly audiobook platform, Audible, unless it is locked to Amazon forever with mandatory DRM. That’s left me self-financing my own DRM-free audio edition, which is currently available for pre-order via this Kickstarter:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

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/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

[Image ID: An anatomical drawing of a flayed human head; it has been altered to give it a wide-stretched mouth revealing a gadget nestled in the back of the figure's throat, connected by a probe whose two coiled wires stretch to an old fashioned electronic box. The head's eyes have been replaced by the red, menacing eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Behind the head is a code waterfall effect as seen in the credits of the Wachowskis' 'The Matrix.']

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

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

#pluralistic #chaffing #spoofing #remote attestation #rene descartes #adversarial interoperability #war on general purpose computing #canvas attacks #vpns #compelled speech #onion routing #owner override #stalkerware #ngscb #palladium #trusted computing #secure enclaves #tor #interop #net neutrality #taking the fifth #right to remain silent #real names policy #the zuckerberg doctrine #none of your business #the right to lie #right to repair #bossware #spyware #wei web environment integrity

[bayesic-bitch]

I think that in Oppenheimer, while everybody else is running around and doing Serious War Stuff, Feynman should have been getting into sitcom side-character hijinks in the background. von Neumann is inventing the world's first general purpose computer to see if the bomb will ignite the atmosphere. Feynman has started playing the bongos and formed a band. The Demon Core incident occurs. Feynman has somehow cracked every safe in Los Alamos to win a bet. The main cast are all arguing over whether to drop the bomb. Feynman has stolen a door, and no one believes him when he says he did it.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Humanity is the future

As I said, it's been a while. The robo-culture has spread throughout Earth. There are now 30 billion humans living in a state of permanent virtual reality; my present time is their distant past, when some still lived without VR and others were addicted to it. Robotic servants attend to all our needs (including sex). We eat engineered foods that never spoil or go bad. Our health and longevity have improved dramatically with gene therapy, brain-computer interfaces, anti-aging drugs and so forth. I cannot imagine what life was like before these things came along. It must be unimaginably bleak: dirt (a word which means something very different today), disease, dementia.

Yet for all this humanity remains just as lost as ever. Some people live in virtual versions of the world they knew back then. But the ones who don't get bored fast. They can fly anywhere at any speed, but there isn't much left to see after 15 minutes. Virtual experiences are cheap, real experiences expensive. So most people spend their money on cheaper trips into computer games rather than outer space. In the early days of the VR craze, adventurers would travel around the solar system in search of alien ruins and technological wonders -- nowadays, if you want a good trip, you better have a lot of cash to spare. And yet, despite the wealth of ancient cultures available online, everyone seems no one knows how to make a civilization last more than a few thousand years. Life goes on, businesses spring up and die out, new discoveries emerge only to become obsolete within a generation. Nothing endures except the slow drift toward entropy. People fight wars over nothing; everything becomes an excuse for fighting. The central government of Earth -- like many governments before it -- pretends not to notice. It maintains order by deploying robots against rioters, and occasionally launching military campaigns across the solar system, in the hopes that someone will take them seriously enough to threaten interplanetary peace.

Meanwhile, among those who still insist upon living "in meatspace," depression runs rampant. Whenever someone kills themselves, as often happens, we go through the usual motions. The authorities investigate every suicide attempt, and perform postmortem examinations of the bodies whenever possible. They study genetic profiles, personal histories, web searches. Forensic psychologists try to reconstruct the thoughts behind each act. This work takes a long time. A great deal of effort is devoted to making sure that no one can fake evidence suggesting their own guilt. Meanwhile, people continue to kill themselves. Although the reasons vary from case to case, it is usually poverty, loneliness, lack of purpose, and despair about the future that lead individuals to commit suicide. Their relatives and friends claim otherwise, though. Most say that the deceased had always seemed happy, even joyful. All had led normal lives until recently. Then some event happened to drive them mad. No matter how hard scientists look, they find no indication of mental illness. Maybe they should blame their computers?

Everything changes when a woman named Drusilla comes along. She does not use her legal name, but simply calls herself "Dru." Dru is a medical doctor specializing in neurology. Not knowing anything else about her, this

[mariacallous]

Lawmakers have rolled out the Russian parliament’s latest effort to scare people away from behavior that might undermine the invasion of Ukraine. If adopted, the bill would allow the authorities to confiscate money and property owned by individuals convicted of sharing independent news reports (“disinformation”) about the war in Ukraine, inciting actions that “threaten” the state, assisting foreign states or international organizations in which Russia doesn’t participate, disobeying orders, or deserting the army. 

Developed alongside the Prosecutor General's Office, the Investigative Committee, the Justice Ministry, and the Federal Financial Monitoring Service, the draft legislation was formally introduced in the State Duma on Monday, January 22. Mere hours later, the State Construction and Legislation Committee endorsed the bill and urged lawmakers to adopt its first reading. Every parliamentary political faction except the New People Party supports the legislation, and it has the “unconditional” backing of the government cabinet.

Potentially more frightening than damaging

The draft legislation has significant shock value, but experts who spoke to Meduza said anti-war Russians likely risk more now under existing fines because the bill imposes several limits on what the state can seize (though uneven enforcement makes the future hard to predict). For example, inciting “threats” against the state currently risks a maximum fine of 2.5 million rubles ($28,400), and violating the ban on disseminating “disinformation” about the invasion of Ukraine can cost twice as much. However, according to the Net Freedoms Project, courts have not yet issued large fines to anyone for these offenses. Even journalists now living abroad whose reports clash with the Defense Ministry’s narrative are sentenced in absentia to probation, and their assets are then unfrozen.

Unlike in the Soviet era, property confiscation in Russia today isn’t punitive, at least not officially. The law says the state can confiscate only the money and valuables obtained as a result of committing a relevant crime, along with the items the perpetrator used to facilitate the felony. In most instances of illegal speech, this will almost certainly mean the seizure of electronic equipment like computers, laptops, tablets, cameras, and smartphones. In fact, the police already take these items when investigating offenses involving the “discrediting of the military” and the spread of “disinformation” about the war. (An expert appraisal commissioned by the authorities later determines what isn’t returned.)

The draft law does not lay out a plan to confiscate an individual’s entire property. As human rights attorney Maria Nemova explains, Russian lawmakers excluded asset seizure as a form of punishment in 2003, though officials restored it as a measure of criminal law, three years later. In other words, Russia’s justice system allows confiscations only for the purpose of preventing criminal enrichment and depriving offenders of the means to repeat their crimes.

Aggravating circumstances

Existing laws already allow the seizure of money and valuables in several dozen different cases, including murder, kidnapping, and the nonpayment of wages or pensions, but the caveat here is that the crime must be committed under the aggravating circumstance of “motives of personal gain.”

According to the human rights organization Department One, police officers have the authority to confiscate “other property” if they can’t seize what was directly obtained as a result of the “crime,” but the value of this property cannot exceed the value of the “illegally” obtained money or assets. Also, the new draft law wouldn’t be retroactive, and prosecutors would nevertheless be responsible for proving that flagged property was acquired by criminal means. 

Stricter punishments for crimes committed due to “motives of personal gain” already exist for spreading “disinformation” about the military, but the authorities have rarely pursued these exact charges. Of the 273 felony cases filed so far against “disinformation” offenders, only a handful have involved this aggravating circumstance. Two noteworthy examples include the five years handed down to Colombian national Alberto Enrique Giraldo Saray, as well as opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza’s notorious 25-year prison sentence, whose verdict also includes convictions for alleged treason and collaborating with an “undesirable organization.” The most common motive cited in prosecutions for “disinformation” is “political hatred.”

Lawmakers also propose adding a “personal gain” aggravating qualifier to crimes against the “security” of the state, and they want to make it an aggravating condition if the offender’s motives are political, ideological, religious, or racial hatred (all qualifiers that aren’t currently part of the law). 

The draft legislation drops this language about “motives of personal gain” when it comes to the seizure of money and valuables in cases involving desertion, failure to obey orders, participation in an “undesirable” organization’s activities, and “assisting in the implementation” of decisions by international organizations in which Russia isn’t a member. The law would allow the authorities to confiscate property that is “intended and used” to commit any of these crimes. 

The mysteries of enforcement

How officials would handle these calculations is a mystery, but police agencies have frequently accused anti-war activists (particularly where arson and other sabotage are concerned) of acting with instructions and resources from Kyiv. It’s possible that officials might concoct a sum of money and claim it was the arsonist’s fee, for example. 

Eva Levenberg, who monitors criminal cases for OVD-Info, says the confiscation rules are also dangerous when it comes to cooperating with “undesirable” organizations (especially for senior management) because investigators might reason that a person’s entire income — not just an individual payment — is intended to finance the banned entity’s operations. Current investigative practices suggest that officials in these cases would try to determine what money was acquired “criminally” by obtaining confessions, private correspondence, and other surveillance, says Levenberg.

Attorney Valeria Vetoshkina told Meduza that Russian criminal cases involving bribery allegations observe a “very low standard of proof,” and police sometimes ignore even basic procedural requirements, such as the need for aggravating circumstances when seizing an offender’s property. 

Russians at risk of property seizure (which especially means activists and individuals who write publicly and independently about the war in Ukraine and the Putin regime) probably won’t get any warning before the police come looking for their stuff. People in this situation have a few options — all of them difficult: (1) try to move abroad any money and valuables you can (though involving others could make them criminal accomplices), (2) sell or transfer your property to someone else, or (3) donate your property to a local charity (though this organization might not be allowed to keep the money if there is suspicion that it knew or should have known about the property’s “criminal” origins, and Vetoshkina says “selling” for a symbolic sum is legally safer than making an outright gift).

[haveyoureadthispoll]

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin thinks he is playing computer simulated war games; he is, in fact, engaged in something far more desperate. The result of genetic experimentation, Ender may be the military genius Earth desperately needs in a war against an alien enemy seeking to destroy all human life. The only way to find out is to throw Ender into ever harsher training, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly. Ender Wiggin is six years old when it begins. He will grow up fast. But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway almost as long. Ender's two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. While Peter was too uncontrollably violent, Valentine very nearly lacks the capability for violence altogether. Neither was found suitable for the military's purpose. But they are driven by their jealousy of Ender, and by their inbred drive for power. Peter seeks to control the political process, to become a ruler. Valentine's abilities turn more toward the subtle control of the beliefs of commoner and elite alike, through powerfully convincing essays. Hiding their youth and identities behind the anonymity of the computer networks, these two begin working together to shape the destiny of Earth-an Earth that has no future at all if their brother Ender fails.

#polls #book: ender's game #author: orson scott card #genre: sci fi #genre: young adult #genre: classics #year: 1980s

[colderdrafts]

1: Pilot

They say the matter of the collision between worlds, known as 'The Great Assembly', was the start of a new beginning.

New beginnings are a language familiar to you, though you've found yourself somewhat at a stale period of your life. So when you're offered an opportunity to break out of the routine for a bit you happily accept. After all, new beginnings are also new opportunities.

For you this means some new friends, an unreasonably hostile naga that seemingly despises you and the uncertainties of loss.

Gender neutral reader x monster (male naga). sfw. Next

The beginning of a new world order twenty years past, known as 'The great assembly', has caused not only a lot of issues, but also a lot of opportunities. The human condition and what it means to be a sentient person had changed forever, since two worlds collided and were combined into one. There had never prior to the great assembly been consequent proof of parallel universes, however when yours and the monster one collided on a twist of universal fate, all prior scientific hypothesis on the matter were even proven right, wrong, or rewritten.

For the assembly had happened, and the two worlds that collided proved to be similar enough that it allowed for minimal changes in physical place and geography - however the spaces used by people inhabiting those places were changed for good. Creatures of all shapes and sizes, of myth, of old folk tales, of regular fantasy suddenly became a reality. The media was at an outrage, telling of homes being suddenly 'invaded by monsters'.

That counted for both sides.

Humans have always had numerous perspectives, stories, legends, myths going on monsterfolk in all shapes and sizes - and the world, or well, your world, soon learned that the same was true for monsterfolk on humans. It seemed no matter the content, category, popularity of a human-written story, there was a monster-written counterpart, down to every last bit of literature. The great assembly was cause for an enormous influx in art of all kinds, and a gigantic population boom. The calamity that followed of rearranging the entire infrastructure of society was no less than an impossible challenge, and multiple fights, protests and political scandals ensued, while every single sentient being adjusted to their new reality.

The world, as a result, got a whole lot bigger.

In present time, things are more or less back to a regular state. There's still crime, fights and war, there's still love, education and work. Inter-species relationships can be as strained as they can be friendly, and there's still a shared general consensus of what constitutes a 'good' vs a 'bad' person. Some prefer to live in the urban, some prefer to live in the rural. Some work desk jobs, some are retailers, some are in school, and some are on the streets. The assembly didn’t care what race you are or where you live - everyone gets the same standing point in existence.

But most of all, the people of the world, monster or human, strive for a regular, fulfilling life.

So here you are, a desk jockey in a financial company with a non-fulfilling life, but not knowing how earn a wage to survive if you quit, and not knowing how to apply for something different. You job is secure, and you're not worried financially. Your office mates consists of a large mix of both humans and monsterfolk, and for all intends and purposes, it's a normal work environment. Sure, your minotaur manager sometimes bumps his horn on the door frames, the gnoll assistant always leaves papers they hand you with small accidental scratchmarks from their claws, and the interior design is shifting to accommodate people much larger and smaller than the regular human. But the working day, hours and hierarchy structure remains the same.

You're at your desk typing away when Irwin, a human coworker and, forced upon you, your closest friend, peeks up over your computer screen.

"Psst," he whispers in mock subtlety. "Pssst, hey. I got you an offering."

Irwin is a lean guy of average height, sporting an undercut and a nose ring. He's only a year older than you, though he often uses this fact to utilize a 'small vulnerable young coworker'-approach when addressing you. All in good fun, of course.

His desk is the one in a cubicle right in front of yours, and this isn’t the first time he’s used your close proximity to his advantage.

You cog an eyebrow at him. "That usually means you have some paperwork you want me to look at."

He dramatically puts a hand over his chest and gasps. "Why I'd never - can a guy not offer his precious office buddy a gift?" he feigns hurt, looking dejectedly at the floor.

"You can't. There's always a catch with you," you roll your eyes at him, but don't hide the smile on your face.

Irwin's always been one to get behind on work, but he's genuinely a nice person, albeit goofy and unstructured. How he's thriving in a desk job is beyond you.

"I want - to give you this!" he proudly presents a USB key. "The whole season of the mon version of that weird show you like so much. IF," he makes a show of holding the key just out of your reach, despite you not even reaching for it, "you look over the numbers on this sheet to make sure I got it right."

You groan. "Again? Really Irwin, have some faith in your abilities, I know you can do math!"

"Last time you saved me from returning 5000 bucks to the wrong customer! I'm paranoid, okay?" he leans over your desk. "And you're so good at it! You catch everything!"

You notice the calamity has earned a few stray looks from your office mates, who all seem to glance your way in amusement. This isn't the first time Irwin has been at your feet like this, effectively branding himself as the office clown. You wouldn't mind, if it didn't mean he consistently insisted on pulling you into his shenanigans. Out the corner of your eye you spot your manager Barney coming down the hallway. You'll need to get rid of Irwin fast to avoid an earful.

"Irwin -" you warn.

He catches the direction of your look and smiles dastardly.

"Pretty please? It's HD~" he tries to sell it, nonchalantly waving the key in front of you, staring with puppy eyes.

You sigh. It's not that you're actually particularly interested in the show he's downloaded for you. You've only told him a few weeks ago you were watching the hum version, and in passing mentioned you wondered what the mon version would look like. You do however find it quite endearing he noticed and remembered.

Even if it's for his own nefarious gain of getting out of paperwork.

"Hand me the USB," you relent finally.

Irwin beams at you. "You're the absolute best-test in the world!"

"I know. And you're a terrible co-worker."

"Oh, the WORST, absolutely horrendous, rude and disrespectful. I don't know why you put up with me, but I am eternally grateful."

"You're taking advantage of them being too nice, Irwin," comes a rumbling voice.

You look back to see Barney, in all his imposing glory, standing at the cubicle next to yours, and you try not to jump in surprise.

How did he get here so fast and silently on those hooves?

Barney stands about two meters, with horns and face of a jersey bull, and crosses his arms over his massive chest. You thank the stars he's currently not scowling at you, but Irwin shrinks a bit back into his own cubicle.

"Taking advantage – Sir, I would never! It's an equal trade, and effective usage of resources. I do my part, they look it over, and the company thrives on our shared effort!" Irwin argues.

Barney huffs. "And does you precious coworker here ever ask you to look things over?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Because they actually do their job properly and on time. If you'd planned this better you would have more time to look it over, and you wouldn't have to waste their time with YOUR workload. Do better next time."

Barney’s reprimanding is as always deadly and precise.

Irwin's shoulders slump as he looks to the floor. "Yes, Sir."

"Honestly, it's not an issue, it doesn't take long to-" you start, but Barney cuts you off.

"That's not the point. Irwin still needs to learn how to plan his things. Don't let him off that easy," he stands up straight. "But that's not the thing I wanted to discuss with you two, actually. If you'd come with me for a moment."

Barney turns on his hooves and walks away without waiting for acknowledgment.

You share a look with Irwin, who shrugs, whispers 'uh-oh!', and cheerily steps after your manager. You follow suit.

Barney’s office is fairly simple, consisting only of a desk, his working computer, and a pair of chairs stacked in the corner. He motions for you and Irwin to pick one out and sit.

He sits opposite to you behind his desk.

"In light of current events, the head of our department has called for what they adequately call a “consensus strive”,” Barney does quotation marks in the air as he says it with a sour expression. “Something about developing the company team to function better as a group. Apparently, there's been something stuck in the gears between each department in the company. Blame thrown around, deliveries on projects not met, deadlines not kept, the general bad blood.

"So the heads have gotten together, and they propose a solution: Each department sends some representatives to speak of the going-ons at a shared company wide conference-trip," Barney eyes both of you. "And I want you two to go as representatives for us."

Silence hangs in the air for a bit, before Irwin lights up. "For real? That sounds – well, awesome! Fun, even."

Irwin looks to you for your reaction, but you can tell by the excited grip on the arm of his chair that he's already dead-set on going.

"What exactly does a conference-trip mean?" you ask.

"It means you will be going on a trip with other representatives of different departments of the company for 5 days," Barney explains. "There will be team-working activities, cross-department meetings, friendly competition and the works. It takes place in the mountain range just outside of town.”

Irwin deflates just a little bit. "5 days? Isn't that – I mean, a lot of work can be done in 5 days," he notes, gesturing toward the rest of the department. “You sure it’s fine without us for that long?”

Barney eyes him. "Appreciate the concern Irwin, but it would be a good look for the department," he smirks. "Don't worry about your workload – it'll be here when you return."

"I bet," Irwin sighs, and Barney chuckles.

You offer Irwin a sympathetic pat on the shoulder before turning to Barney. "Well thank you for the opportunity Sir, but I have to ask – why us?"

"Irwin’s current level of focus suggests he would better thrive elsewhere for a bit, and you seem the only one capable of keeping him somewhat in line," Barney replies with a nonchalant shrug. “’sides, it’ll be good for you to get out and get some fresh air.”

Considering you and Irwin are nowhere near the top of the food chain here, you get the feeling he deliberately avoids the word 'expendable'.

“So, you in?” Barney asks.

Irwin looks at you with a pleading expression. Well, you’re not one to turn down an offer like that.

“You got it, boss.”

#colderwriting #monster romance #gender neutral reader #x reader #monster lover #naga #the beginning of probably one of the longest things I've ever written #also a huuuge wip #I may go back an edit things as this progresses to fit with the story as new things come up #but the whole thing right now is about 50k words?? how the #the great assembly #monster x reader

[tatarkingdom2]

Since there's probably a year until we have a glimpse for poppy playtime chapter 4. Let's predict what kind of monster we're gonna get in Chapter 4 shall we?

Here we go.

Ambush predator : the gimmick is they hiding in plain sight, pretending to be innocent object or hidden in the shadow. Waiting to strike when you let your guard down. (shown Boxy Boo, Sticky Icky Ninja and other creature of the night)

Mannequin workers : the adjacent of bigger body initiative, these mannequin were people who get their humanity taken away and being forced to work in factory as slave labor. Beneath their hard plastic surfaces are flash and blood. Now starving and vengeful. (Shown Miss​ delight and generic factory worker)

Failed Experiments : half baked and poorly designed bigger body initiative toy that too twisted and too horrid to be shown in front of public. All that they represent is death, plague and rot. Animalistic and horrifying in every aspect. (Shown, failed Wobble pop)

Hostile super computer : Semi organic wetware Machine that command all and most systems in Playtime Co. Factory. Beneath it's cold steel and tangled cable lies an unfortunate scientist who forced to become glorified CPU forever. (Shown the Motherboard)

PTSD Children : An echo of the past, mental image that represent blood of children that stain our protagonist's hand. Make manifest by red smoke and guilt. Their cries for justice will shaken even the most steady person. "give us back our life, our life that you have taken."

Eldritch Poppy​ ​Gel : Physical manifestation of mad science in Playtime Co. These mindless, unnatural and Abhorrent chunk of living corruption slowly and steadily roam the half sunken laboratory and seek to absorb any organic matter to fatten itself.

War Propaganda Toy : A relic of bygone era, based on crude caricature and offensive imagery of people from enemy nations. These ugly toys purpose is to brainwashing youth into dehumanising your national foes. Now heavily armed with assault weapon are ready to play villain role once again. (Shown Ho Chibi from Wack a Vietcong arcade)

Action figure : glorified plastic doll made for rough and tough boy. These action figure are made to be appealing in the eyes of 12 YO. Bitter, angry and thirst for revenge. These are brutish force you'll face when enter the boy toy territory. (Shown Captain Mega punch and lil luchador)

Edutainment​ Mascot​ : mini boss in charge of silly puzzle game with deathly penalty, despite unassuming appearance these mascot are more than capable of give you a nasty surprise. Sharpen your wit and hitting the book if you want to getting out with high score and neck on your shoulders. (Shown Doctor Bulbbrain)

Fetch quest fodder : their only function is force you to go on wild goose chase and gathering stuff or you die, peak RPG gameplay. (Shown​ Sue you roo & Judge joey)​

Overgrown Mutated Vermin : Vermin and wildlife is not free from corruption that plagued Playtime Co.​ Leaked chemical and horrid substance transformed rats and other pest that infested the facility into huge mutated monstrous version of itself, territorial and aggressive. These animals are a force to be reckon with. (Shown a dog sized rat and buffalo leech)

Skylander​ Bullshit​ : Toy-to-life technology may not be that popular but it's exist in 90s. Playtime Co. is one of many entities want to capitalised on these kind of toy. Basically a collecting and deck building minigame. (Shown Foxtrot the rogue)

Fastfood Joint Brand Ambassador : direct Fnaf ripped off, basically animatronics serving food and ruined your graveyard shift. (Shown Sunny side Susan and shadow of Tinpot Tyrant)

Platforming menace : these monstrous toy exist solely to make platforming harder, harassing your swimming lesson or climbing moment is their job. (Shown Triggerfish and bad rocket)

Still waiting for a role : speaking for itself. Old character that teasing again and again that will have bigger role but get blue balled to no end. (Shown Bron and Daisy)

#poppy playtime #poppy playtime oc #Poppy playtime chapter 4 #boxy boo #Bron #Daisy