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tigerlover16-analysis · 6 years

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Dragon Ball Super: Episode 5 Review

Ok, so, yeah. I'm pretty late with this one and I'm sorry about that. I don't want to get into it too much, but basically things have been kind of hectic since last week, especially the last few days with my dog having a rough time after giving birth. I did have most of this review written for a bit, but then due to a computer screw up most of it got deleted so my enthusiasm to write took a bit of a hit there. I'll start writing the episode 6 review straight away and that should be up on Sunday as scheduled barring any extraneous circumstances.

Anyway, enough wasting time, I've done enough of that. Let's talk about episode 5 of Dragon Ball Super.

The episode picks up where the previous one left off, with Beerus arriving on King Kai's world to meet with Goku. After King Kai's attempts to keep Goku hidden fail, Beerus questions Goku about the identity of the Super Saiyan God. When Goku is unable to give him an answer, Beerus decides to go to Earth to question Vegeta instead, which King Kai worries might lead to Beerus blowing the planet up out of annoyance. But before Beerus can take off, Goku suddenly challenges him to a sparring match.

Episode 5 is a pretty important episode in terms of the Battle of Gods saga and Super as a whole. Though previous episodes had featured brief action scenes, this was the first episode to feature a significant fight between two characters. For a franchise famous for it's action scenes, this makes it a pretty big deal.

Which makes it all the more tragic that they kind of screwed the pooch on it.

Brief history lesson, Dragon Ball Super was announced close to the release of the Resurrection F movie, and was intended to capitalize on the movies hype and serve as a replacement series for Dragon Ball Kai.

And unfortunately, while the series has a more than capable team of animators, writers and other production staff, Toei really rushed the show's pre-production to get it out straight after Kai ended. Some estimate that it only had about two months of pre-production, a far cry from the roughly six months that many ongoing battle Shonen series usually require.

The result was that only the first 3 or 4 episodes were finished before Super started airing properly, and the animators were rushing to get episode 5 and everything after it out on time. Which lead to the fighting portion of episode 5 featuring weak direction, some moments of awkward movement, and a lot of laughably rough art in places.

Yeah... this isn’t even the worst of it.

Naturally this lead to wide-scale mockery across the internet, with many declaring the show a disgrace and the episode to have the worst animation in all of Dragon Ball. Which, I'll discuss that bit in a minute, but needless to say it was truly concerning and did a lot to dampen people's excitement for a new Dragon Ball series.

Not unfairly, of course. Dragon Ball is one of the biggest and most popular anime franchises of all time and a cornerstone of pop culture. It really deserved a lot better from it's production and visuals than what we were given here.

Especially since, as I've said, the show's animators are more than capable of producing good stuff. A good number of them are veterans from Z, including this episodes supervisor, Naoki Tate, who is probably one of the most talented animators working at Toei (Oh, and side note, I'd like to redact my statement that he was the animation supervisor on episode 2. He worked on the episode, but episode 2 was supervised by Osamu Ishikawa. My bad, I don't know how i screwed that one up).

It's made even more tragic by how Tate got thrown under the bus by a large portion of the fandom, when really it was none of the animators fault how this episode turned out. They only had a few weeks to produce it, and under such pressure the production just fell apart, and yet Tate was lambasted as a hack by much of the fandom for two years thanks to this episode, and things only really started to look up for him after episode 110.

There's not a lot I can say about the animation itself. We have a lot of rough art, with several still shots of characters looking blatantly unfinished. Some of the movement is repetitive and the framing of the fight isn't very exciting.

There's moments of decent animation, I like the way the grass on King Kai's planet is blown clean off by the force of SS3 Goku's punches being blocked by Beerus, and there's a nice bit of fluid movement at one point where Beerus flips over Goku as he tried to land several consecutive hits on him right before Goku blasts a decently rendered kamehameha through King Kai's planet... fluid movement which is unfortunately obscured by a poor post-processed aura effect, which is a recurring issue all throughout Super.

But the decent bits of movement and the consistent art outside of the fighting segment don't really save the bulk of the action from being a let down. I could go a lot more into detail, but I'm not a genius when it comes to talking about the animation process, I prefer talking about writing.

That being said, was this really the worst looking episode in all of Dragon Ball?

... No. No, not at all. There's been worse animated products in Dragon Ball before, and there are worse looking episodes of Super later on (And God, is that depressing to say...). This was a bad looking episode and there's certainly some stuff that's laughable coming from a modern series for one of the most famous and lucrative anime franchises in the world, there's no denying that.

But between the memes and bad press, and the in-betweens people float around as examples of how horrid it looks when anyone who actually understands animation knows that's not how it works, I think people have overblown it's supposed abysmal quality out of proportion a bit.

Now that's not me defending the episodes animation, it is rough and blatantly unfinished in a lot of places, it deserves criticism even if I think it's only fair to be mindful of the conditions the animators themselves were in.

We can certainly be critical of whatever stupid higher ups at Toei decided it was a-okay to rush the series into production so suddenly, especially since it had a horrible ripple effect that left Super with a troubled production right into it's final saga, even though things did improve greatly over time.

But at the same time, I don't think it's really fair to lambast this episode as one of the worst things to ever happen to Dragon Ball as some people did early on, because, honestly outside of those animation issues... the episode is perfectly fine.

Seriously, writing wise this episode was well put together. The interaction between all of the characters at the beginning was perfectly fine, no one was really written badly, and there were a few good jokes. Especially in the dub which improves the dialogue a bit. King Kai's Japanese voice still sounds off, but again, dub fixes that and it's not the end of the world.

And for what the episode was intended to be, it was well constructed writing wise. Having the first encounter and fight between Goku and Beerus extended to a full episode rather than the less than ten minutes scene from the movie was a good move, since we needed a lengthier action scene at this point.

And the way the fight was written was perfectly fine, with Goku trying to fight Beerus as both a super saiyan and then super saiyan 2. The animation and overall bland direction undermines the tension unfortunately, but on paper this wasn't a bad way to go at all. And it does still sell the point of what this encounter was meant to do: Establish that Beerus is so far beyond Goku at even the peak of his current level of power that he can slap him around without anything close to real effort, and thus raise concern for what's going to happen to the earth.

On that note, big props to Sean's voice acting as Goku towards the end there. He really sells Goku's desperation and concern for everyone. With all the complaints about Goku in Super supposedly being a lot less mature and more reckless than before, moments like this show that Goku can in fact take things seriously when he needs to.

Heck, considering he challenged Beerus straight after the God said he might destroy the earth if he was annoyed and he was immediately thinking of ways to beat Beerus after being knocked down, it seems likely that his challenge to fight him was actually an attempt by Goku to keep him from doing any damage and it just looked like him just being careless to King Kai and Gregory. That's how I interpret it anyway.

From a storytelling POV, there's honestly nothing offensive about episode 5, it mostly did what it needed to. Sure, it's mostly just the same stuff we saw in the movie but extended... but hey, it's an adaptation, that's kinda what we should expect. And again, not everyone saw the movie so this isn't as huge an issue as a lot of people think.

If this episode had been graced with better animation, I'd honestly call it good. Maybe not great unless said animation was REALLY good, but really I can't think of anything worth complaining about and it's paced well enough.

It's just that... well, the animation IS a big issue. When your episode is centered around a fight, then that fight needs to be handled well or the whole thing ends up kind of a flop. In an episode that's mostly building up the plot and dialogue heavy, bad or inconsistent animation can be easily ignored so long as the writing is up to par, in my opinion.

Heck, episodes with fights that aren't exceptionally well animated can still be good or even great if the writing and story content is good enough. It helps if both elements are good and working in harmony, but good writing in a story trumps all other aspects.

But this episode? The content we got was alright, but there wasn't really anything exceptional here that particularly makes up for the animation issues, unless you're someone that really, REALLY loves Beerus and enjoys seeing him slap Goku around.

The end result of how this episode turned out is that it's just kind of dull. It has a few good moments, but it kind of drags in the middle because of the subpar animation, and while there's nothing about it outside of the animation that's especially awful (Though if you're an animation student you're likely to be balling your eyes out by the end) it's also not that memorable, at least not for good reasons.

If I'm being fair, I can actually enjoy this episode if I'm in the right mindset, I found it mostly fine AS I was watching it on DVD multiple times in preparation for this review. So I think if you go into it with low expectations, it's somewhat harmless and easy to get through while you're waiting for the next episode, which has more worthwhile content.

That's not a ringing endorsement of course, but for an episode like this it's the best praise I think anyone could give it, really.

I should mention that the Japanese Blu-ray collection for Super did include some handy clean ups for the episode. It doesn't fix most of the movement, the storyboaring or such, but it does clean up a lot of the iffy art so that it looks...

... better. Still not great, and there's plenty of shots that still look off and some that look like they weren't fixed, but the episode is a bit less of an eyesore now so that probably helped my enjoyment a little since it's the Blu-Ray versions the dub airings and DVD collections use. It's more of a quick patchwork job than fixing the issues though, I wish they'd done a bit more, but whatever. Too late to complain now.

Episode 5 is not a good episode. It is a testament to how poorly managed Dragon Ball Super's production was at the beginning, and would unfortunately result in further troubles for the series over the course of it's lifespan, both in animation and writing. The episode could have been pretty good, but ends up as a missed opportunity and is a bit of a red flag for anyone just getting into the show.

I cannot defend Toei's management for rushing the show's production, that was careless and I'm glad there seems to be a restructuring going on right now and that Toei overall seems to be taking better care with future Dragon Ball products, like the upcoming movie. All signs seem to be pointing that we'll be seeing better productions for future Dragon Ball series to come.

That does not make what happened here excusable though. People have a right to complain about the animation and production issues Super faced at this point and further on in the series, and while I don't feel negatively of the show overall, I still feel that things should have turned out better than they did. Episode 5 will always serve as a constant reminder of how things can go wrong behind the scenes of a popular series.

But that said, just because mistakes like this happen doesn't mean it's the end of the world. For all the issues it still faced, Super would still see huge leaps made in improving it's animation and storytelling later on, which would include many of the best looking episodes in the entire Dragon Ball canon. It was, and still is, possible for Toei to learn from the mistakes they made with the series at this point and do better going forward.

And I hope that by the time the next Dragon Ball series rolls around, we'll see a positive result from that. In the end, I suppose failure can have it's benefits as a learning experience.

And by the same token, for all the issues it has with it's visuals, this episode in of itself was far from the worst thing ever and I do not believe it sabotaged the first arc as a whole. It was nothing special and a real mess, but I can look past it in the long run. Though I appreciate if it's flaws are just too great for some people to look past, I can't hate it as a whole package.

My final grade for the original version of the episode in Japanese would be a D. For the somewhat corrected version with the dub, I'll be as generous as I possibly can and give it a C-

Boy, that was a trip. I'm not sure if I feel completely comfortable with how this review came out, but honestly I should have gotten this out a while ago and I just want to be done with it, so I hope you can all forgive me if I didn't get my point across very well or if I just spent too much time badgering on about stupid platitudes. I might come back and edit it in the future after I've gotten the next review done and I've had some more time to clear my thoughts on this one. But for now, hope I gave you something to think about.

#dragon ball super #dbs #dragon ball super review #dragon ball super episode 5 #dbs reviews

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strechanadi · 7 years

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Paris Opéra ballet Swan lake - when it’s not about Odette

So I assume you were all too shy to ask, but you actually desperately want to read my review on POB Swan lake, right?

So ... Here it is!

(And as always - I’m sorry for that English grammar I murdered once again. I truly am.)

(Yes, they pay me for this.)

Paris Opéra ballet Swan lake - when it’s not about Odette

It’s December. And for almost every ballet company in the world it means annual Nutcracker madness. Not for Paris Opera. French most prestigious scene chooses for every christmas season another big classic and this year it was time of the most iconic piece - Swan lake, returning on stage of Opéra Bastille after just year and a half, and being broadcast live on December 8th in various cinemas in France, Germany, Austria or Belgium. Czech spectators could watch the record in local cinemas on 17/12 and 18/12.

Big classics in ballet world mean ballets by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. And for Paris Opera pieces by these two masters mean choreographies by Rudolf Nureyev, who was also director of the company between 1983 - 1989. He made his first version of Swan lake in 1964 for Viena Staatsballet, where he danced the premiere himself with Margot Fonteyn and after the performace they recieved record 89 curtain calls. Paris version was born 20 years later in 1984 and its psychological aspect follows Swan lakes by John Cranko (1967) or John Neumeier (1976).

Distinctive storytelling

Nureyev was not just extraordinary and non conventional dancer, he was equally exceptional as choreographer and storyteller. He brought the prince into focus and made him true main character of the ballet. He added two solo variations for him in Act 1 (first on music of pas d’action, the second, slow one on andante sostenuto, which is in the original Tchaikovsky score situated right before Pas de trois, and which has been commonly cut out) and also returned his variation into Act 2 (right after Big swans pas de quatre). But more importantly he intensified prince’s character.

Siegfried in Nureyev’s concept is not an ordinary dreamer, his absent-mindeness and daydreaming are significant, almost symptomatic for him. The real world with its obligations, responsibilities and conventions, he could learn but never truly understand, is unfriendly place for a young man like him - in short Nureyev made his prince suffer with one of the autistic spectrum disorder.

Such prince needs tutor or mentor more than ever to help him better understand the complexity of court’s life. The tutor is Wolfgang, mysterious, enigmatic man, whose relationship with Siegfried is strange, a bit unclear, but unquestionably strong with as many interpretations of it as casts. Second act gives another perspective on said character, changing Wolfgang into Rothbart, magical creature who has unlimited power over Odette. Considering prince’s personality, the idea of all swans’ acts taking place solely in Siegfried’s fantasies and dreams basically suggest itself (as even Nureyev indicates). The white swan then represents not only the idea of pure love, but she is also reflecting prince alone, for her existence depends on Rothbart just as Siegfried’s depends on Wolfgang.

Act 3 is the most ambiguous. Reality with Siegfried on his own engagement party blends in with prince’s own inner world, where he is trying to hide, and where’s Odile - embodiment of sensuality and attraction (so she’s more like an addition to romantic Odette than her opposite). However even in his own dreams Siegfried is not left alone with object of his desires. The famous so called black pas de deux becomes a masterly pas de trois thanks to constantly present Rothbart.

There are two decisive moments in last Act. The first one is Odette and Siegfried’s duet (music for pas de six formerly from Act 3) with lots of synchronal dance passages and repeated steps, that are danced by both dancers who are constantly changing their place in pair (sorry, this sounds really stupid, but this is what I was talking about and couldn’t translate to English…), so Odette and Siegfried are blending in with each other even more. And then there is final Siegfried’s confrontation with Rothbart, that is referring to Siegfried’s duet with Wolfgang from the end of Act 1. At the very end they even literally repeat some parts of it, which could be an explanation and answer to some of spectators’ questions or on the contrary it could provoke new speculations on the true nature of Wolfgang/Rothbart and his relationship with Siegfried.

The dreamy, kind of blurred atmosphere is supported by faded pastel or light earthy colour costumes (Franca Squarciapino) and very minimalistic, yet expressive decors and stage design (Ezio Frigerio), that mainly in Act 1 complete the picture of stern, hostile world in which Siegfried feels like a prisoner.

Artistic approaches

From what was written is clear, that this Swan lake depends even more than any other on its interprets.

One of the most emblematic princes of Paris Opera is Mathieu Ganio, étoile of the company. And watching him on stage you fully understand why. If there should be just two words describing his performance, it would be honesty and genuineness, because the way he more lives than acts his part is simply disarming. He portrays his prince with remarkable nuances. He is able to act as an aristocrat, to play his part in social interactions, if it’s needed. But then there are moments he could be his true self (and it is not just by coincidence there is always Wolfgang with him) and his immense fragility, mental confusion and insecurity are evident. His ineffable tenderness and open fascination with white swan is almost touching and makes sharp contrast to his confidence and dominance in Act 3 where he would like and tries to catch up with Odile, who arouses his desires, but by her constant escaping and refusing him, also provokes his resentment and anger, very unique emotions in Siegfried’s character. The end of Act 3, while he’s trying to deal with the discovered truth about Odile, almost matches Giselle’s mad scene from the first act of said ballet in its unaffected harshness. Speaking of his dancing - Ganio could demonstrate his unquestionable talent for dreamy adagio variations full of emotions, his refined arabesques as well as soft and at the same time French precise pas de chats and especially his extraordinary sense of music and Nureyev’s choreography. His Siegfried’s variation from the end of Act 1 is one one of the most poetic moments not just of this particular Swan lake.

The dual role of Odette and Odile was danced by étoile Amandnine Albisson. There are some truly remarkable musical moments in her dancing, she intuitively follows all rythmical accents and reacts on any change of music. However, she’s no exceptional interpret otherwise, besides her artistic and acting choices aren’t always compatibile with Ganio. As an untouchable, unattainable Odette she maybe seems too reserved, too distant, but her lack of swan like arms and pliant, flexible back required are the biggest issues. Her Odile then is more winsome, enchanting than demonic and disdainful, however although the role of femme fatale suits Albisson better, there’s still some kind of spark and individuality lacking.

The real main couple

While Albisson/Ganio couple is not completely flawless, missing its magic and better chemistry between the two of them, the couple Ganio’s Siegfried makes with François Alu’s Wolfgang strongly stands out. Their relationship makes you shivers sometimes, but it’s their remarkable duets, full of meaningful gestures and looks, that can break your heart (wait a minute - this is something I wanted to delete before sending to editors! Well… shit.), that are the most intense. They are full of contrasts. Where Ganio is elegant and melancholic, Alu is energetic and forceful. While Ganio’s Siegfried is embodiment of artlessly innocent devotion and pure, almost childlike, naive gullibility, Alu’s Wolfgang is uncompromisingly dominant, darkly authoritative and very well aware of his power over young prince. And he doesn’t hesitate and just brazenly taking advantage of it. Francois Alu makes his Wolfgang not very layered character, even as prince’s tutor, he’s more like Rothbart, flamboyant villain, who hides his intentions behind fake joviality, that Siegfried is almost unable to expose. His mockery and self-satisfaction visible in his eyes every time prince looks at him with explicitly sincere devoutness, is completed by powerful dancing, that literally explodes in Rothbart’s variation in Act 3. But maybe he could slightly slow down and concentrate more on the duality of his character. Or characters?

The famous Act 1 Pas de trois was danced by three talented first soloist Leonore Baulac, Hannah O’Neill and Germain Louvet (AN Louvet and Baulac were named étoiles on 28th and 31st of December after their performance as Siegfried and Odette/Odile). Valentine Colasante and Arthus Raveau caught viewers’ attention in Act 3 as one of the two pairs in Spanish dance.

Endless inventiveness

Nureyev choreographies use the traditional classical steps, but are famous for its distinctive style and difficulty not for the soloists only, but for the whole ensemble. The corps de ballet is the fourth main role in this Swan lake. Act 1 is prove of Nureyev’s genius in corps de ballet dances and is crowned by masterly, all men polonaise (Dance with cups traditionally). In Act 2 he sticks with iconic Ivanov’s choreography (or with what we use to think is Ivanov’s choreography), but even here he is able to find his own way how to play with it. Dances of swans are full of nuances, full of different details, any two succesive steps are not completely the same, there’s always at least slight change in port de bras, in tilt of head, in the direction of look, and that makes the whole picture even more textured and vivid. In Act 4 he left typical swan port de bras behind and the dancers, moving across the stage in canon, are giving impression not so much of birds but more of slowly growing waves of heavy seas.

People are use to watch Swan lakes because of the swan dual role and mainly the ballerinas dancing them. In case of Nureyev’s version, you should be interested in interprets of main male roles. Because they are the ones who truly matters. Don’t let yourself be confused by Odette/Odile on top of casting list.

#ballet #swan lake #review #Paris Opera Ballet #selfpromo

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megatechcrunch · 6 years

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Answers to the three most commonly asked questions about maintaining GDPR-compliant machine learning programs.

Much has been made about the potential impact of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on data science programs. But there’s perhaps no more important—or uncertain—question than how the regulation will impact machine learning (ML), in particular. Given the recent advancements in ML, and given increasing investments in the field by global organizations, ML is fast becoming the future of enterprise data science.

This article aims to demystify this intersection between ML and the GDPR, focusing on the three biggest questions I’ve received at Immuta about maintaining GDPR-compliant data science and R&D programs. Granted, with an enforcement data of May 25, the GDPR has yet to come into full effect, and a good deal of what we do know about how it will be enforced is either vague or evolving (or both!). But key questions and key challenges have already started to emerge.

1. Does the GDPR prohibit machine learning?

The short answer to this question is that, in practice, ML will not be prohibited in the EU after the GDPR goes into effect. It will, however, involve a significant compliance burden, which I’ll address shortly.

Technically, and misleadingly, however, the answer to this question actually appears to be yes, at least at first blush. The GDPR, as a matter of law, does contain a blanket prohibition on the use of automated decision-making, so long as that decision-making occurs without human intervention and produces significant effects on data subjects. Importantly, the GDPR itself applies to all uses of EU data that could potentially identify a data subject—which, in any data science program using large volumes of data, means that the GDPR will apply to almost all activities (as study after study has illustrated the ability to identify individuals given enough data).

When the GDPR uses the term “automated decision-making,” the regulation is referring to any model that makes a decision without a human being involved in the decision directly. This could include anything from the automated “profiling” of a data subject, like bucketing them into specific groups such as “potential customer” or “40-50 year old males,” to determining whether a loan applicant is directly eligible for a loan.

As a result, one of the first major distinctions the GDPR makes about ML models is whether they are being deployed autonomously, without a human directly in the decision-making loop. If the answer is yes—as, in practice, will be the case in a huge number of ML models—then that use is likely prohibited by default. The Working Party 29, an official EU group involved in drafting and interpreting the GDPR, has said as much, despite the objections of many lawyers and data scientists (including yours truly).

So why is interpreting the GDPR as placing a ban on ML so misleading?

Because there are significant exceptions to the prohibition on the autonomous use of ML—meaning that “prohibition” is way too strong of a word. Once the GDPR goes into effect, data scientists should expect most applications of ML to be achievable—just with a compliance burden they won’t be able to ignore.

Now, a bit more detail on the exceptions to the prohibition.

The regulation identifies three areas where the use of autonomous decisions is legal: where the processing is necessary for contractual reasons, where it’s separately authorized by another law, or when the data subject has explicitly consented.

In practice, it’s that last basis—when a data subject has explicitly allowed their data to be used by a model—that’s likely to be a common way around this prohibition. Managing user consent is not easy. Users can consent to many different types of data processing, and they can also withdraw that consent at anytime, meaning that consent management needs to be granular (allowing many different forms of consent), dynamic (allowing consent to be withdrawn), and user friendly enough that data subjects are actually empowered to understand how their data is being used and to assert control over that use.

So, does the GDPR really prohibit the use of ML models? Not completely - but it will, in many of ML’s most powerful use cases, make the deployment and management of these models and their input data increasingly difficult.

2. Is there a “right to explainability” from ML?

This is one of the most common questions I receive about the GDPR, so much so that I wrote an entire article devoted to the subject last year. This question arises from the text of the GDPR itself, which has created a significant amount of confusion. And the stakes for this question are incredibly high. The existence of a potential right to explainability could have huge consequences for enterprise data science, as much of the predictive power of ML models lies in complexity that’s difficult, if not impossible, to explain.

Let’s start with the text.

In Articles 13-15 of the regulation, the GDPR states repeatedly that data subjects have a right to “meaningful information about the logic involved” and to “the significance and the envisaged consequences” of automated decision-making. Then, in Article 22 of the regulation, the GDPR states that data subjects have the right not to be subject to such decisions when they’d have the type of impact described above. Lastly, Recital 71, which is part of a non-binding commentary included in the regulation, states that data subjects are entitled to an explanation of automated decisions after they are made, in addition to being able to challenge those decisions. Taken together, these three provisions create a host of new and complex obligations between data subjects and the models processing their data, suggesting a pretty strong right to explainability.

While it is possible, in theory, that EU regulators could interpret these provisions in the most stringent way—and assert that some of the most powerful uses of ML will require a full explanation of the model’s innerworkings—this outcome seems implausible.

What’s more likely is that EU regulators will read these provisions as suggesting that when ML is used to make decisions without human intervention, and when those decisions significantly impact data subjects, those individuals are entitled to some basic form of information about what is occurring. What the GDPR calls “meaningful information” and “envisaged consequences” will likely be read within this context. EU regulators are likely to focus on a data subject’s ability to make informed decisions about the use of their data—basically, the level of transparency available to the data subject—based on information about the model and the context within which it’s deployed.

3. Do data subjects have the ability to demand that models be retrained without their data?

This is perhaps one of the most difficult questions to answer about the impact of GDPR on ML. Put another way: if a data scientist uses a data subject’s data to train a model, and then deploys that model against new data, does the data subject have any right over the model that their data helped to originally train?

As best as I can tell, the answer is going to be no, at least in practice—with a very theoretical exception. To understand why, I’ll start with the exception.

Under the GDPR, all uses of data require a legal basis in processing, and Article 6 of the regulation sets forth six corresponding bases. The two most important are likely to be the “legitimate interest” basis (where the interests of the organization justify specific uses of that data, which might cover a use like fraud prevention) and where the user has explicitly consented to the use of that data. When the legal basis for the processing is the latter, the data subject will retain a significant degree of control over that data, meaning they can withdraw consent at any time and the legal basis for processing that data will no longer remain.

So, if an organization collects data from a data subject, the user consents to have their data used to train a particular model, and then the data subject later withdraws that consent, when could the user force the model to be retrained on new data?

The answer is only if that model continued to use that users’ data. As the Working Party 29 has specified, even after consent is withdrawn, all processing that occurred before the withdrawal remains legal. So, if the data was legally used to create a model or a prediction, whatever that data gave rise to may be retained. In practice, once a model is created with a set of training data, that training data can be deleted or modified without affecting the model.

Technically, however, some research suggests that models may retain information about the training data in ways that could allow the discovery of the original data even after training data has been deleted, as researchers Nicolas Papernot and others have written about extensively. This means that in some circumstances, deleting the training data without retraining the model is no guarantee that the training data could not be rediscovered, or no guarantee that the original data isn’t, at least in some senses, still being used.

But how likely is training data going to be rediscovered through a model? Pretty unlikely.

To my knowledge, rediscovery of this sort has only been conducted in academic environments that are pretty far removed from the everyday realities of enterprise data science. It’s for this reason that I don’t expect models to be subject to constant demands of being retrained on new data due to the GDPR. Though this is theoretically a possibility, it seems to be an edge case that regulators and data scientists will only have to address if this specific type of instance becomes more realistic.

All that said, there’s a huge amount of nuance to all these questions—and future nuances will surely arise. With 99 Articles and 173 Recitals, the GDPR is long, complex, and likely to get more complex over time as its many provisions are enforced.

At this point, however, at least one thing is clear: thanks to the GDPR, lawyers and privacy engineers are going to be a central component of large-scale data science programs in the future.

Continue reading How will the GDPR impact machine learning?.

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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41 Of The Creepiest Unsolved Mysteries Of All Time

Settle in, this is a long one. These “scariest” unsolved mysteries are based on the opinions of the people over on r/unresolvedmysteries who know enough about unsolved cases at large to be experts on the creepiest ones. If you’re looking for a lengthy thread of bite-sized “true scary stories”, we’ve got one of those too.

The woman who recorded other people’s voices on her sleep app

Here’s how she describes what happened:

“This night I was sleeping in my bed – my 3 year old was with me that night as he is scared of the dark. It was just the two of us in the whole house. The next night I decided to go through and delete my recordings and saw this particular record. In it, you can here some clicks that start to get louder over the course of the recording. Eventually you can hear me say “What are you doing??” and immediately after there is a deep voice that says “Nothing”. The clicks become very loud at that point and at the very end of the recording you hear the same voice say “That’s them” (I think?). I am pretty creeped out by this. I don’t remember being awake that night. The only plausible explanation is that I answered my own sleeping talking but the voice doesn’t even sound like me or something I could emulate. It definitely doesn’t sound like a voice my preschooler could emulate, either. I have no idea what the clicks could be. I keep a fan going at night for white noise but the clicks sounds like they’re coming from right near my phone (which is placed right by me on my bedside table). I want to say that I’ve picked up the clicks a few times on recordings before but deleted them thinking it was nothing – this is the first time I’ve ever heard anything, though.”

Here is the audio of the recording. The woman has since moved to a new house, but one Redditer who followed up with the story said:

“I actually private messaged with the OP of the sleep app story. She was happy to say that things were going well in their new home, and her son was doing well. However, if you look at the more recently dated comments after the story was posted, OP says her son had started asking where “Ho” was and seeing “the black guy with no face.” OP and I exchanged some PMs about a year after their original post to discuss what could be going on, and apparently “Ho” followed them to their new home.”

UVB-76

Also known as “The Buzzer”, UVB-76 is a radio signal of unknown origin. No one knows what it’s purpose is or why it’s happening. They suspect it may be of Russian origin. Here’s what it sounds like:

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Dutroux

“Last one: a somewhat bigger mystery, but truly terrifying. Dutroux is a well known Belgian child abuser that was caught in the 90’s. It turns out the circle of abuse is much bigger and influential than one can imagine. This is a very long and well documented read about how the investigation into child abuse is being hampered by government, police, upper class figures, etc. It takes a strong stomach to digest the witness accounts (highly nsfw) and a strong stomach to digest the injustice.” — IamScuzzlebut

The murder of Mark Kilroy

Wikimedia

From Wikipedia:

He was taken by his abductors to a ranch where he was murdered in a human sacrifice ritual. Kilroy was killed with a machete blow and then had his brain removed and boiled in a pot. His killers then inserted a wire through his backbone, chopped off his legs, and buried him at the ranch along with 14 other people who had been killed there before him.

Jodine Serrin

From Reddit:

Serrin lived on her own, but depended on her family for help due to her mental challenges. Late in the evening of Valentine’s Day 2007, Jodine’s parents went to the condo they had purchased on Swallow Lane for their daughter and walked in on what they thought was an awkward situation. Art Serrin went to find his daughter in her bedroom, and saw a man having sex with her.

According to a 10News report, Serrin told the man to get dressed and then he and his wife, Lois, went to wait for what they expected to be an embarrassed couple to join them in the kitchen. After several minutes, Serrin returned to the bedroom and found his daughter murdered, having been beaten and strangled to death. The man had escaped, possibly through a back door.

In fact, as investigators later found, she had been dead for between 12 and 24 hours.

Dale Kerstetter

YouTube

From Reddit:

At 11:00 PM on September 12, 1987, 50-year old Dale Kerstetter showed up to work the overnight shift as security guard at the Corning Glassworks plant in Bradford, Pennsylvania. Dale was a divorced father of six who worked at the plant for 29 years, but had recently been transferred from his position as a trades worker to a security guard, which involved him taking a pay cut of between $5,000-7,000 per year. At 7:00 AM the following morning, Dale’s relief arrived and discovered he was missing. Dale’s truck was still in the parking lot with the keys in the ignition. His daypack and a full carton of cigarettes were inside the truck, along with the holster for a .22 caliber gun he carried which was never found. Dale’s keys to the plant and a newspaper were found on a table in the cafeteria, along with his lunch pail, which still had all his food inside. A police dog was brought in and tracked Dale’s scent from the cafeteria to the second floor, but it came to an end at the plant’s glass furnace.

The security tape from that night was later checked. The plant had three security cameras and the feed would alternate between each camera at random intervals. The footage revealed an unidentified masked intruder walking through the plant at various points between midnight and 1:00 AM. In one of the shots, the intruder was seen meeting up with Dale in the back of the plant. They both walked past the security camera together, where Dale appeared to look up and stare directly at the camera before they disappeared out of frame. Dale did not show up in the security footage again, but one shot showed the intruder heading towards the glass furnace, the same area where the police dog tracked Dale’s scent. There was also a shot of the intruder wheeling a large bag through the plant on a manual forklift. It was soon discovered that $250,000 worth of platinum lining had been stolen from the furnace.

On the surface, it appeared the intruder had forced Dale to escort him to the area containing the platinum before he subsequently murdered him and disposed of his body. However, Corning’s management believed that Dale was actually involved in the theft.

When Dale walked through the plant and stared directly into the security camera, some people interpreted this as a signal for help, but Corning thought Dale might have been taunting them about his crime. At the time, Dale was in debt and unhappy that his employer had cut his pay and given him a security position, so Corning believed Dale willingly escorted the intruder to the furnace, helped him steal the platinum, and then skipped town with his share of the profits. Of course, Dale’s family did not believe he would get involved in anything illegal and abandon his children, so they feared he was an innocent victim of foul play. Whatever the truth, there has been no trace of Dale Kerstetter in nearly 30 years.

The Circleville Letters

A woman and her husband in Circleville, Ohio started getting creepy letters. One day, the husband received a letter and got riled up enough that he got his gun and left the house. He was letter found dead in a car crash, his gun had been fired. The husband’s brother was eventually charged with the crime, but began receiving the same letters once he was in prison.

Here’s a nice write-up on the whole store from The Line-up.

The Sodder Children

Wikimedia

From Wikipedia:

On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1945, a fire destroyed the Sodder home in Fayetteville, West Virginia, United States. At the time, it was occupied by George Sodder, his wife Jennie, and nine of their ten children. During the fire, George, Jennie, and four of the nine children escaped. The bodies of the other five children were never found. The Sodders believed for the rest of their lives that the five missing children survived.

Dave Bocks

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A factory worker at a nuclear power plant went missing during his shift. Many people suspect foul play as he may have been a whistle blower for illegal activities taking place at the plant.

Blind River Killer

I remember this as the scariest episode of in which an elderly couple on a cross country road trip stopped at a rest area to sleep for the night. In the middle of the night attacked the couple and shot and killed a bystander to came to their aid. He drove off in a blue van and was never caught.

East Area Rapist / The Original Nightstalker

American Law Enforcement

A serial rapist and killer who raped at least 50 women in northern California in the 70’s. He has never been identified.

A few things that make this killer a bit creepier than the rest:

1. The East Area Rapist sent letters and drawings to newspapers in the area taunting citizens. Here’s a map he drew of what is believed to be his “ideal” suburban neighborhood stalking grounds:

Sacramento Police Department

2. He would call and taunt his victims or intended victims. He called one woman he raped to wish her a merry Christmas, saying:

Merry Christmas, it’s me again! (hangs up)

You can listen to some of the phone calls here, but please be warned, these are very disturbing!!

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3. There was a town meeting to discuss the rapist/killer at large. During the meeting one man stood up to say that the East Area Rapist could never harm his family because he wouldn’t “let” something like that happen to his wife. His wife was latter attacked leading people to believe the actual East Area Rapist attended the town meeting. A photo from that meeting exists.

Keddie Cabin Murders

3ternalist01

From Wikipedia:

Glenna “Sue” Sharp, 36, and her five children had been renting the cabin since November 1980. At approximately 7:45 AM on the morning of April 12, Sheila Sharp, upon returning from the sleepover next door, discovered the tied-up bodies of Sue, John and Dana in the home’s living room. Plumas County Sheriff’s deputies later determined Tina Sharp was missing from the location. The murders have been commented upon for their particular viciousness.

After approximately 4,000 man-hours spent on the case, it grew cold but, in 1984, the cranium portion of a skull was recovered near Feather Falls in neighboring Butte County, a distance of roughly 63 miles (2 hours 12 minutes) from Keddie. Butte County Sheriff’s Office released both the original and back-up copy of the audio recording of the ‘anonymous call’ to an undisclosed member of law enforcement.

As of May 2017, no arrests have been made in connection with the Keddie murders, although two suspects who had criminal records, now deceased, have been proposed. In 2004, Cabin 28 was demolished.

There’s been a recent break in the case that, for many, may explain what happened:

On March 24, 2016, a hammer matching the description of a hammer suspect Martin Smartt said he lost shortly before the murders was taken into evidence by Plumas County Special Investigator Mike Gamberg. Sheriff Hagwood stated, “the location it was found… It would have been intentionally put there. It would not have been accidentally misplaced.

The Mothman

From Reddit:

The Mothman sightings of 1966 was always a favorite story of mine and still is this day. If you go down the rabbit hole there are soooo many weird pieces including MIB showing up to this tiny town. Some of it might have been mass hysteria but damn if it isn’t a wild ride until the very end.

Morgan Nick

Wikimedia

From Wikipedia:

On June 9, 1995, Morgan Nick and her mother, Colleen Nick, went to a Little League baseball game in their town of Alma, Arkansas. At around 10:30 p.m., Morgan asked her mother if she could catch lightning bugs with her friends. At first, her mother was uncertain, but eventually let her go. She was last seen at 10:45 p.m. by her friends, emptying sand out of her shoes alone near her mother’s car while her group of friends emptied their shoes a few dozen feet away. Morgan’s friends reported seeing a “creepy” man talking to Morgan as she was putting her shoes back on.

When the game ended shortly thereafter, Morgan’s friends returned without her. They told Colleen that Morgan was at her car, but when Colleen returned to the car, Morgan was not there. She has not been seen or heard from since.

Pedro Lopez

A Columbian criminal known as the “Monster of the Andes” is out of prison after serving 13 years of a 16 year sentence for murdering as many as 300 little girls. No one knows where he is now.

Brian Shaffer

The medical student who went to a local bar for a drink and was never seen again. Security footage showed him entering the bar, but not leaving. He was by all accounts happy and had plans to propose to his girlfriend the following week. He hasn’t been seen since that night.

Hinterkaifeck murders

Andreas Biegleder

From Wikipedia:

A few days prior to the crime, farmer Andreas Gruber told neighbors about discovering footprints in the snow leading from the edge of the forest to the farm, but none leading back. He also spoke about hearing footsteps in the attic and finding an unfamiliar newspaper on the farm. Furthermore, the house keys went missing several days before the murders. None of this was reported to the police prior to the attack.

Six months earlier, the previous maid had left the farm, claiming that it was haunted; the new maid, Maria Baumgartner, arrived on the farm on the day of the attack and was killed hours later.

Exactly what happened on that Friday evening cannot be said for certain. It is believed that the older couple, as well as their daughter Viktoria, and her daughter, Cäzilia, were all lured into the barn one by one, where they were killed. The perpetrator(s) then went into the house where they killed two‑year‑old Josef, who was sleeping in his cot in his mother’s bedroom, as well as the maid, Maria Baumgartner, in her bedchamber.

On the following Tuesday, April 4, neighbors came to the farmstead because none of its inhabitants had been seen for a few days.

Dorothy Jane Scott

From Wikipedia:

Dorothy Jane Scott disappeared on May 28, 1980, in Anaheim, California. She had driven two co-workers to the hospital after one had been bitten by a spider. While they were waiting for a prescription to be filled, Scott went to get her car and bring it around to meet them. Her car approached them, but it sped away; neither could see who was driving as its headlights had blinded them. They reported her missing a couple of hours later, after not hearing from her. In the preceding months, Scott had been receiving anonymous phone calls from a man who had reportedly been stalking her. He had threatened to get her alone and “cut [her] up into bits so no one will ever find [her]”.

Dyatlov Pass Incident

Soviet investigators

From Reddit:

The Dyatlov Pass Incident is the unsolved disappearance of nine hikers in the Ural mountains in Russia in 1959, and subsequent discovery. There’s a whole lot of details to this case which are mentioned in the link, but for a brief summary:

Ten experienced ski hikers embark upon a trek through a mountain pass that locals describe as “Devil’s Pass.”

One of the hikers returns on his own due to illness. The others continue ahead. After the party don’t return when expected, a search party is sent out into the mountains to look for them. Their campsite was eventually found, abandoned and slashed open from the inside, and the bodies were eventually all found at various points nearby in various unusual states, including some naked or undressed, some with their heads basically smashed in (which later investigations showed were impossible to have been done by humans).

This is a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream, with details that don’t add up, Cold War/KGB cover-ups, UFO sightings, cryptozoology (yeti theories), weapons testing, nuclear radiation emanating from the bodies, stories of local savage tribes etc. But even without all that, it’s still a pretty eerie story on its own.

Dyatlov Pass is a total rabbit hole and it’s one of my personal favorite mysteries.

Laureen Rahn

From Reddit:

14-year-old Laureen Rahn was last seen in her apartment in Manchester, New Hampshire on April 26th, 1980. She spent the evening drinking beer with a male and female friend while her mother Judith was away at a tennis tournament. At some point, the boy heard voices in the hallway and left through the back door, thinking Judith was coming home. He stated he heard Laureen lock the door behind him.

When Judith finally returned at midnight, she found the building completely dark because the light bulbs on all three floors had been unscrewed. She checked Laureen’s room and thought she saw Laureen asleep on the bed. In the morning, however, this turned out to be Laureen’s friend, who said that she had last seen Laureen going to sleep on the couch. Laureen’s clothes and new sneakers were in the living room, and the back door was open.

The police investigation went nowhere until Judith looked at her phone bill and discovered she had been charged for three phone calls made from Santa Monica, California on October 1st, 1980, three months after Lauren went missing. Two of these calls were placed from a Santa Monica motel to another motel in Santa Ana. The third call was to a teen sexual assistance hotline run by a plastic surgeon. Authorities in Santa Monica questioned this surgeon, and he denied knowing anything about Laureen.

Judith hired her own investigator in 1985, who questioned the doctor again. This time he altered his story and said that his wife was sometimes visited by runaway girls (!?) and that one of these girls may have been from New Hampshire. He also believed that a colleague of his wife’s named Annie Sprinkle knew more about these runaways. Authorities looked into this and found that Sprinkle was involved in the pornography industry, but nothing was found linking her to Laureen.

Another investigator traveled to Santa Monica in 1986 and learned that the two hotels may have been used by a child pornographer named “Dr. Z.”, but authorities couldn’t find a connection between “Dr. Z” and the doctor who ran the hotline.

For a year after the disappearance, Judith reported getting regular phone calls at around 3:45 a.m., but there would be nothing but silence on the line when she answered. She received similar calls around the Christmas holidays for several years until she finally changed her number. According to Charley Project, a childhood friend of Laureen’s received a call from someone claiming to be her in 1986. His mother answered the phone, but unfortunately the article doesn’t elaborate on what the caller said.

In the previous thread about this, the OP quoted someone from a forum post who claims that her mother was the friend who was with Laureen when she vanished. Her mother said that they were hanging out with two guys that day (not one as stated in Charley Project) and that Laureen may have left with one of them. The guy who left through the back door committed suicide in 1985 and is not considered a suspect.

It is also worth nothing that other women, Denise Denault and Rachael Garden, of similar physical appearance to Laureen, disappeared from the same area within a six-week time period. Their cases are also unsolved and have never been linked.

The “30 Minutes or Less” murder

From Wikipedia:

Brian Douglas Wells was an American pizza delivery man who was killed by a remotely controlled bomb fastened to his neck, under coercion from the maker of the bomb. After he was apprehended by the police for robbing a bank, the bomb was detonated.

“Down the hill”

From Wikipedia:

On February 14, 2017, the bodies of Abigail “Abby” Williams and Liberty “Libby” German were discovered on an American hiking trail in Delphi, Indiana, after the young girls had disappeared from the same trail the previous day. The murders have received significant media coverage due to the fact that a photo and audio recording of a man believed to be girls’ murderer was found on the cell phone of German. Despite the photo and audio recording of the suspect being released to the public by police, and an estimated 18,000 tips being sent to police, no arrests have been made in the case.

One of the girl’s Snapchat photo:

Two Indiana teen were murdered shortly after taking these eerie photos. Today at 3, @DrOz looks at the cellphone of victim Liberty German. http://pic.twitter.com/cEdB4PZ7sk

— WSB-TV (@wsbtv) October 17, 2017

The audio:

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Lars Mittank

Findet Lars Mittank

From Reddit:

a case about a 28 year old man from Germany, Lars Mittank, who visited Bulgaria with his friends. This place in Bulgaria is very famous for young people from Germany and England, same as Mallorca or Ibiza.

Mittank got involved into a fight and hurt his ear. Something that happens always at those places where many young people are partying.

He stayed there and enjoyed the rest of his holidays with his friends. When they had to leave though, the doctor said he can not use the airplane because of his ear. He decided to stay in Bulgaria and rented a room in a hostel while his friends left.

He called at night his mother and said he fears for his life.

Here is a footage from the airport. Mittank wanted to leave again and catch his next flight. He went to the doctors office though, with all his stuff, suitcase etc. After that, he runs out from the doctors office.

People outside saw him how he climbed over a fence and disappeared in a nearby forrest. Till today, no one knows what happened or where he is. His family is still searching for him, there is even a facebook page.

Elisa Lam

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From Wikipedia:

Her disappearance had been widely reported; interest had increased five days prior to her body’s discovery when the Los Angeles Police Department released video of the last time she was known to have been seen, on the day of her disappearance, by an elevator security camera. In the footage, Lam is seen exiting and re-entering the elevator, talking and gesturing in the hallway outside, and sometimes seeming to hide within the elevator, which itself appears to be malfunctioning. The video went viral on the Internet, with many viewers reporting that they found it unsettling. Explanations ranged from claims of paranormal involvement to bipolar disorder from which Lam suffered; it has also been argued that the video was altered prior to release.

The circumstances of Lam’s death, when she was found, also raised questions, especially in light of the Cecil’s history in relation to other notable deaths and murders. Her body was naked with most of her clothes and personal effects floating in the water near her. It took the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office four months, after repeated delays, to release the autopsy report, which reports no evidence of physical trauma and states that the cause of death was accidental. Guests at the Cecil, now re-branded as Stay on Main, sued the hotel over the incident, and Lam’s parents filed a separate suit later that year; the latter was dismissed in 2015.

Paula Jean Weldon

From Reddit:

Paula Jean Weldon was a sophomore at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont in the fall of 1946. On December 1st, she told her roommate, Elizabeth Johnson, that she was “through with studies; I’m taking a long walk” . Dressed in a red parka coat with a fur lined hood, blue jeans, Top-Sider shoes with thick soles, and a gold Elgin wristwatch with a black band, she made no indication she planned on staying gone for very long.

She was supposed to walk part of Vermont’s Long Trail. Danny Fager, who owned a gas station near the college gates, said he spotted Paula. He said he had seen her run up then down the side of the gravel pit near the entrance of the college around 2:45 P.M. 15 minutes late, Louis Knapp claimed to have picked up a young girl matching Paula’s description on Route 67A and let her out on Route 9, near the Long Trail. Just after 4 P.M., she was spotted by several people in Bickford Hollow, seemingly headed toward the trail. When Paula did not come home later that night, Elizabeth was not yet worried, and did not warn anyone. The next morning when Paula had still not come back by the next morning, she contacted College President Lewis Webster Jones. Jones then phoned Paula’s parents to ask if she had gone home for the weekened.

Mrs. Welden collapsed with worry. Her father, W. Archibald Welden immediately left the family home in Stamford, Connecticut. He helped organize a massive search party, but their search turned up empty. He then called the New York and Connecticut state police forces, as VT did not have a state police force at the time.

Days passed and Paula was still missing. Then, a waitress in Fall River, Massaschusetts claimed to have served dinner to a “disturbed” women fitting Paula’s description. Strangely, after hearing this, Mr. Welden vanished for 36 hours. After his return, people began to suspect that he had something to do with his daughter’s disappearance. It came to light that Mr. Welden did not approve of a boy Paula had been seeing. He claimed this boyfriend had to be the responsible party, but his only proof came from a clairvoyant. He then began to trash the police for their lack of professionalism and lack of records. Mr. Welden soon returned to his home in Stamford.

Poor weather eventually halted the search for Paula, but 9 years later, a lumberjack came forward saying he knew where her body was buried. After being questioned, he eventually admitted making it up for publicity. Then, in 1968, a skeleton was found. It was later determined it was far too old to be Paula.

There have been many theories as to what happened to Paula that fateful December day. Did she simply get lost in the woods and die in the elements or did she run off with her boyfriend? Or did the so called Bennington Triangle, where 5 people vanished between 1945 and 1950, have something to do with it?

Sadly, as more and more time passes, it seems very unlikely the case of what happened to Paula Jean Welden will ever be solved.

Grave Robbing for Morons

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From Reddit:

In the early 1990s, a homemade VHS circulated around called “Grave Robbing for Morons”. It features a young man explaining how to rob graves without getting caught, what bones are most valuable, and other grave robbing “tips.” In the video he shows what appears to be an actual human skull that he’s stolen and at the end he gives the nicknames of himself and his grave robbing crew: “Anthony, “Gino, “Taco”, and “Pucci” and vows to continue robbing graves for the fun of it. To this day, no one knows who made this video or who the narrator is. There is a site dedicated to finding out the origin of the video and the identity of the narrator, but they don’t have any additional information to add.

Because of the over-the-top nature of some of the advice, some believe that the video is an act intended to cash in on the pseudo-reality television craze that was going on thanks to things like Faces of Death. But others seem to think that at the very least the narrator has robbed graves, and that this could be a “legit” (i.e. not faked) video.

Kathryn Ott

From Reddit:

This missing person’s case does not have much coverage and I am hoping to bring some interest back to this 3 year old unresolved disappearance.

In 2014, Kathryn Gayle Ott was 56 years old. She was 62-64 inches tall and weighed around 125-140 pounds. Kathy had brown eyes, that may appear hazel and wore eyeglasses. She avoided driving at night. She underwent a hysterectomy in 2013 that left her with an abdominal scar. She had a bad left knee cap with noticeable scarring from where a wire was placed to keep the knee together. She had been losing her blonde, graying hair and wore a wig. Her family believes she had been recently diagnosed with a serious medical condition in 2014, although she had not disclosed any details of an illness to them.

Kathy packed up her things and left her husband at their home in Lapeer, Michigan, in May 2014 after receiving social security disability with back pay. CORRECTION: She received supplemental security income with back pay. She drove her 2003 gray Chevrolet Impala with Michigan tag 2JS N90 to her son’s home in Gulf Shores, Alabama arriving in the end of May 2014.

On June 17th, 2014, she left Alabama after finding out she would not be able to receive her SSI checks. Her wig was left behind at her son’s home. According to family, a missing person’s report was filed and her children have not spoken to her since she left Gulf Shores.

But in late August 2014, Kathy called her father from St. Thomas Rutherford Hospital in Murfreesboro, Tennessee where she was receiving treatment for unknown reasons. This is the last time anyone heard from or saw Kathy.

Her NamUs case file has Murfreesboro Police Department as the investigating agency and her missing person’s report was filed February 27th, 2015.

What did Kathy do for 2 months with no incoming money? How did she end up in Murfreesboro?

Where is Kathryn Ott?

Barbie.avi

youtube

From Reddit:

Allegedly found on a computer in a dumpster, the whole clip remains mysterious.

An amputee can be seen on camera, she gets emotional throughout the video. During the video text can be seen which says B.I.I.D after analysis it was found out this stands for Body integrity identity disorder, this is a disorder which makes people feel as if they need to have there limbs amputated because they believe they do not belong on their body.

People have speculated that the woman is discussing her next operation with rogue doctors.

Jessica Haddix

From Reddit:

Jessica Haddix, 29, went missing in late April of 2009 from the Perry County area of Kentucky. In early May of the same year, her body was found in the Knott County area on an old strip mining area. She was wrapped in a tarp and stuffed in a drain pipe. I don’t think they ever released her cause of death, but IIRC she was killed around the same time she was reported missing.

She was last seen arguing with her ex-husband, who she had been living with. Jessica had two kids, one with this ex. She was reportedly threatening to leave him and was planning on taking their son with her. Her ex was also seemingly abusive. Jessica had even showed up to her daughter’s soccer game with a black eye on time.

After she was last seen, her ex-husband was seen on camera using her food stamp card at a local grocery. Her car was found not far from his house.

A local woman who did Jessica’s taxes tried calling her, not knowing that Jessica was already missing and presumably dead. She was calling to inform Jessica that she needed to come in and sign some papers. Jessica’s ex-husband answered the phone and simply said Jessica was not there, and hung up.

After her body was found, her ex-husband received custody of their son. The woman who tried calling Jessica reported the phone call to the police, and they said they would look into it. They never followed up with woman.

Most people are convinced her ex-husband killed her to stop her from taking their son.

His parents were well known, and had many connections in the community. The investigation into her death was virtually non-existent, and it seems to point to a cover up by the local PD. It seems plausible, because how do you put no effort into what seems to be a murder that seems easily solvable? No DNA tests were ran, ex-husband has no alibi, no arrests were made and nobody was thoroughly questioned. So was it shotty, inexperienced officers? Or a cover up?

Her daughter was barely 9 years old and her son wasn’t even a toddler when their mother was murdered. They had to grow up without a mom. Jessica and her family deserve justice.

Missy Bevers

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From Reddit:

On April 18th, 2016, 45 year old fitness instructor, Terri Bevers (who often went by the name Missy) was brutally murdered inside Creekside Church located in Midlothian, Texas in the early hours of the morning.

At the time, she was getting preparations ready for a fitness class — Camp Gladiator — before her students were to arrive at 5 in the morning. Once class was soon to begin, that’s when Missy’s students discovered her lifeless body. Her death was caused by puncture wounds to the head and chest.

As the investigation went underway, the police discovered surveillance footage [inside the church] with the suspect dressed in tactical gear [SWAT]. This person was dressed to the nine, from the vest, pants, boots and even a helmet, along with a hammer that was used for Missy’s murder.

This is where things became peculiar. Whomever this POI is, they had a very unorthodoxed and unnatural posture/stance, especially when walking aimlessly. Whether this was intentional or not, it cannot be confirmed.

Nevertheless, this footage did allow the police to build a timeline of events.

Surveillance shows the suspect inside walking around casually and opening the many doors. Not only that, this incident took place at approximately 4:15 in the morning, just 45 minutes before Missy’s class was to start.

Although presumed to be male, officers are still unsure on the gender of this individual. Subsequently, investigators started to look into Missy’s personal life. Due to search warrants the police were able to find — possible — motives.

Missy was a mother of three kids and having a lot of troubles financially and with her marriage, specifically on her part with unfaithfulness. Texts and other forms of messages found her being flirtatious with another male(s?). With that being uncovered, police finally had their biggest break in the case, yet unfortunately that avenue didn’t provide any substantial clues that would help determine Missy’s killer.

Missy’s husband, Brandon, told police he strongly believes that the murderer is a female and knew her on some form of personal basis. Furthermore, he suggests that this unidentified person attempted to make this tragedy look like a burglary gone wrong, mainly due to surveillance showing this individual opening doors and breaking glass windows.

The strangeness of this case didn’t stop there, however. A few days after the murder had happened, Missy’s father-in-law, Randy Bevers, went to the dry cleaners bringing in a women’s XXL long sleeve shirt covered in blood. He told the employees that it was merely from a Chihuahua dog that was recently injured and taken to a vet.

Out of suspicion, employees contacted the police and the shirt was subjected to DNA testing for evidence. Nonetheless, the vet was able to confirm this incident. Although the shirt became ruled out, investigators still had their eye on Randy.

More interestingly enough, Randy, the father-in-law, is roughly the same height and weight of the stranger captured on surveillance. While this crime was making its coverage on various television news channels, the family of Missy were brought into the public eye.

During a particular broadcast, the father-in-law was interviewed. As such, many people noticed that his demeanor was slightly different in terms of emotion. Not only that, the way Randy walked was practically identical to the POI in the surveillance footage. Eight months has since passed by and despite all of this information, the case is still unsolved as of today, December 28th, 2016, and no updates have been made that’s been released to the public. Missy’s murderer is still free.

I think this case deserves a lot more attention than it’s receiving. Whether the killer is a male or female, I cannot say for certain. That being said, in my eyes, this case should be solvable. I can’t fathom the notion of this simply being an act of sheer randomness.

To me, it was methodical, deliberate, and personal, with the killer knowing Missy on a level of friendship or simply acquaintances in one way or another. This unidentified person had an idea of Missy’s schedule and planned their attack accordingly. I’m hopeful this case will be solved soon.

More footage of a strange vehicle driving around the area before the murder:

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Here is a chilling comparison to the gait of the person on surveillance footage and Missy’s father in law:

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Gareth Williams

A spy who was found dead locked inside a gym bag in his own apartment.

Jennifer Kesse

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From Wikipedia:

Jennifer Kesse was last seen on January 23, 2006, at approximately 6pm, leaving her place of employment, Westgate Resorts, in Ocoee, Florida. That evening she made several calls to family and friends; the last call around 10 p.m. was to her boyfriend. Typically, Jennifer would call or text her boyfriend every morning on her drive to work to talk and wish him a good day. On the morning of January 24, Jennifer never called or sent a text message. Any call to Jennifer’s phone went directly to voice-mail. When Jennifer failed to arrive at work that morning, her employer contacted her parents, who immediately made a two-hour drive from their home to her residence. Her parents noticed that her car was missing, but upon entering her condo, they saw nothing that looked out of the ordinary. Evidence at her residence, including a wet towel and clothes laid out, indicated that Jennifer was at home the morning of January 24 and had showered and dressed for work.

Alistair Wilson

From Reddit:

Alistair Wilson, he was shot on his door step in Nairn, Scotland in 2004. His wife answered the door to a small, stocky man who asked for her husband by name. Once Alistair got to the door the man handed him an envelope, which Alistair took inside for a brief moment and then came back out and was shot dead by the unidentifed man. Who took the envelope with him.

The silent twins

From Reddit:

June and Jennifer Gibbons were identical twins born to a Caribbean couple in 1963. The family moved to Haverfordwest, Wales, shortly after the children’s birth. From the time they learned to speak, June and Jennifer had a particular high-speed patois that made it difficult for people to understand them. Being the only black children at their school, they were frequently bullied by their peers. The bullying led to their special language becoming even more irregular, to the point where no one could understand what they said.

At 14 they were sent to separate boarding schools, to encourage them to thrive on their own. Both girls became catatonic and were quickly reunited. Following their reunion, they spent several years locked in their room, playing with dolls, putting on operas for one another, and writing.

They wrote several short stories that they self-published. The stories tend to revolve around criminality and sex. After the stories failed to garner any attention, they left the confines of their room and started living in the real world. They continued to speak with no one but each other. They started committing crimes such as arson, theft, and assaulting one another. A judge ruled that they need to be committed, and they were sent to Broadmoor Hospital, where they remained for 14 years.

In 1993 it was decided that the twins would be transferred to Caswell Clinic, a lower-security facility. When the twins arrived at Caswell, Jennifer was found to be unresponsive. She was rushed to the hospital but later pronounced dead. The cause of death was acute myocarditis or a sudden inflammation of the heart. No drugs or poisons were found in her system.

A few days after Jennifer’s death, June was reported to say, “I’m free at last, liberated, and at last Jennifer has given up her life for me.”

Bill & Dorothy Wacker

From Reddit:

Bill and Dorothy Wacker lived in a small town in Stark County, Ohio in the same house they have lived in for most of their 48 years of marriage. Despite being quiet, unassuming people, they’ve been subject to a campaign of harassment which began in 1984. On January 16, 1985, their home was ransacked. Though this had happened twice before, Bill informed the sheriff this time. In July of that year, Dorothy was home alone, recovering from heart surgery, when she heard a knock on the door. She didn’t recognize the visitor but allowed him in to use her phone, as he told her that his car broke down somewhere down the road where she couldn’t see it. After making the call and saying goodbye, she believed he had left. However, he was actually still in the house and managed to sneak up behind her and knock her out with a blow to the head. She woke up bound and gagged on the kitchen floor. She managed to crawl to an open window and alert her neighbors, who called emergency services. She was not seriously injured from the ordeal, but Bill returned home to find some possessions stolen: a .22 caliber revolver, an antique watch, a movie camera, and a radio scanner. In the dining room, the message “cheaper, but will do” was scrawled in crayon on the wall. About four months after the assault, Bill found the revolver on the front porch, wrapped in a plastic shopping bag. Over time, the other three objects were quietly returned as well. Notes left by harasser Notes left by the harasser The harasser began calling the house, sometimes threatening them with violence and sometimes simply breathing deeply. Changing their phone number several times failed to make the calls stop. The harassment began to escalate. Occasionally after dark, they would hear a series of banging on the side of their house, though they never saw or heard anything unusual when they’d check outside. Eventually, they put up a security light but later found a note on their front porch saying “your lightz are a laugh.” Periodically, notes began appearing on the front porch, threatening and mocking them. Police noted that the uneven, jagged style of the writing appeared to be due to someone using their non dominant hand to write, as if to conceal their handwriting style. No fingerprints have ever been found on the notes. On the night of October 27, 1993, another attack on Dorothy sent her to the hospital with skull lacerations. Police searched the neighborhood and questioned residences but failed to find any clues or witnesses.

Why would someone stalk and attack this old couple? What are your thoughts and theories?

Candace Hiltz

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From Reddit:

Candace Hiltz was a seventeen year old single mother, a junior at Brigham Young University and a newly accepted student to be at Stanford Law School. She dreamed of becoming a Supreme Court Justice. She had a brilliant level of intelligence, a ferociously protective personality and a great affinity for the law. All of that was destroyed when she was brutally murdered. Her family sought answers, but ultimately discovered that the men charged with solving her murder may have in fact been involved in it.

On August 10th, 2006, a Deputy from the Fremont County Sheriff’s Department in Colorado arrived at the Hiltz family home. He questioned Dolores Hiltz in regard to the whereabouts of her son, James. Sometime during the questioning, Dolores’ daughter Candace became angry by his demeanor and told him to leave. The Deputy threatened to arrest Candace, who then threatened to expose him for taking bribes from local drug dealers.

Three days later, the Hiltz family dog went missing. It was later found tied to a tree and had been killed with a hatchet or small ax. Two days later, on August 15th, Dolores left the home to run some errands. She arrived home three hours later and found her granddaughter unsupervised and crying in her crib. There were pools of blood on the floor and drag marks. Dolores made the grisly discovery of Candace’s body. She had been shot multiple times, wrapped in a green comforter and shoved beneath a bed.

The investigation was shoddy from the beginning, with the lead investigator being the same Deputy who had the verbal altercation with Candace just days earlier. The crime scene wasn’t protected and sealed, evidence was left behind and the prime suspect was Candace’s brother, James. After he was apprehended, he was charged with for breaking into a home and stealing some items, but not the murder of his sister. Over the next ten years, no new leads were developed nor evidence discovered. The Hiltz family and the Fremont County Sheriff’s Department engaged in a rather public exchange of contradictory statements.

Candace’s autopsy showed she had been shot by two to three different weapons and at least two assailants as several shots were projected into her front and back simultaneously. However, there were several errors and contradictions in the report. Then, out of nowhere, a man who purchased an abandoned storage unit discovered vital pieces of evidence related to the murder which had been stolen from evidence and kept there but the Deputy who ran the entire investigation, the very one who had that altercation with Candace.

Theories began to build up accusing the Sheriff’s department of a cover up and even of being complicit in the murder itself. The lead investigator retired amid a torrent of accusations, and just months after, was brought up on charges for his mishandling of evidence as well as tampering with official paperwork.

Was Candace Hiltz murdered in a random act of violence? Did the father of her daughter lash out and take her life? Did her brother James lose control and murder his own sister? Or did the lead investigator play a much more vital role in the very murder he was investigating?

Nacole Smith

Crimestoppers

From Reddit:

On June 7, 1995, 14 year old Nacole Smith left her home in Deerfield Apartments in Southwest Atlanta to walk to school with her sister and a friend when she forgot her book report. She left her friends and took a shortcut through the woods back to her home when she was attacked by a man who assaulted her and shot her. Security guards in the area found her at 9:20 AM but her killer was long gone.

Several years later on June 20, 2004, a 13 year old girl was preparing for Father’s Day in East Point, Georgia. She was lured by a man into the woods on Connally Drive where he then assaulted her. She was able to escape and get help. DNA linked this man to the 1995 murder of Nacole Smith. This crime occurred 3 miles away from the first.

The second victim provided investigators with a description of the man. The black man appeared to be in his late 20s to early 30s, was 5-feet-10 inches tall and weighed approximately 190 pounds. He had a medium complexion, a gap in his front teeth, and was wearing round, gold-framed glasses, according to police.

In the “On the Case” episode, the detectives working on the case stated that they believe the man is someone from the area. The detectives were able to obtain school records for the day of Nacole’s murder and they were able to narrow down the male students who were absent from high school that day. One man named Steven Boris (sp?) piqued their interest because he was arrested for statutory rape and false imprisonment. They were able to interview him and he willingly offered up his DNA. His DNA did not match.

It’s really scary that this man has never been caught in all these years. I assume he didn’t stop after the second crime unless her escaping spooked him. The detectives seem convinced that the man is someone in the area but what’s the likelihood he’s not from the area? He’s pretty distinctive looking (if the sketch is accurate) so I don’t see how he could go unnoticed in the area.

Relisha Rudd

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From Reddit:

Relisha Rudd is a young African American girl who disappeared from Washington DC in approximately 2014. Relisha Rudd stayed at a homeless shelter in DC with her family where her mother, Shamika Young, handed over her daughter (allegedly) to Kahlil Malik Tatum, the janitor there. The last day Relisha Rudd was seen alive was March 1, 2014. Due to many missed absences from her school, a school counselor calls DC Child & Family Services Agency to inquire about Relisha’s repeated absences as she had missed more than 30 days. Shamika Young, excused her absences by noting that Relisha was ill per “Dr. Tatum”.

TIMELIME:

February 26, 2014, Relisha is seen walking toward a room in the Holiday Inn Express on Bladensburg Road, NE.

March 1, 2014: Last day Relisha was seen alive. There are no other confirmed sightings of Relisha or Tatum together after this date

On March 19, 2014 a social worker calls, Tatum in order to set up a meeting, however Tatum does not show. The social worker finds out that “Dr. Tatum” is actually a janitor.

On this day DC police begin a missing-person investigations. Around 9 PM an officer tries to call Tatum’s cell however it is powered down and never gain activated.

On March 20, 2014 somebody returns to the motel and finds Tatum’s wife, Andrea Tatum, dead. The source indicates that he helped Tatum do internet search for a handgun.

March 31, 2014, Tatum is found dead in a park in DC.

So what happened to her? Where did Relisha go in the thirty days she was missing?

The legs