from the homumiko mines

I'm reading the 'Age of Surveillance Capitalism' book by Shoshana Zuboff, and it is haunting me, making me feel uncomfortable and making me want to move offline.

We've all been aware that google, facebook, and all other digital tech companies are taking our data and selling it to advertisers, but according to the book, that is not the end goal.

The book goes into the rise of google, and how it made itself better by constantly studying the searches people were inputting, and learning how to offer better information faster. Then, they were able to develop ways to target adverts, without even selling the data, but by making their own decisions of what adds should be targeted at what audience. But they kept collecting more and more data, and basically studying human behaviour the way scientists study animals, without their knowledge or consent. Then they bought youtube, precisely because youtube had such vast amounts of human behaviour that could be stored and studied.

But they're not only using that data to target adds at us. They've been collecting data in ways that feel unexpected and startling to me. And whenever they're challenged or confronted with it, they pretend it was a mistake, or unintentional, and it's scary how far they've been able to get away with it.

For example, during their street-view data collecting, the google car had been connecting to every wifi available and taking encrypted, personal data from households. When they got found out, they've explained it was not intentional, and a fault of a lone researcher who had gone rouge, and they evaded getting sued or being held accountable for it at all. Countries have created new laws and regulations and google kept evading it and in the end they claimed 'you know if you keep trying to regulate us, we'll just do things secretly'. Which is a wild thing to say and expect to get away with!

Another thing that struck me was that governments, which at first wanted to restrict data collection, later asked tech companies to monitor and prevent content connected to terrorism, and the companies didn't like the idea of being a tool of the government, so they claimed the terrorism data is being banned for 'being against their policy'. Which makes me believe they didn't want to remove that content at all, after all, they could have done it beforehand, they didn't feel any natural incentives to do so.

The entire story is filled with researchers who don't seem to experience the human population as other human beings. They don't believe we deserve privacy, or dignity, or any say in what is being collected or done to us. Hearing their quotes and how they describe the people they're researching shows clearly they consider us all stupid, and our desires for privacy, self-harming. They insist we'd be better off if we just accepted their authority and gave them any data they wanted without complaining or being upset it's being collected without our knowledge.

Even though companies claim at all times that the data is non-identifiable, the book explains just how data is handled and how easy it is to identify anyone whose private conversations are recorded; people say their names, their addresses, places they're going, friends they're meeting, they say names of their family members, their devices record their location and their habits, it is extremely easy to identify anyone whose information has been collected. It can be identified and sold to information agencies.

I believed when it was explained to me that most of the data collection was just for add targeting, and that it would be used only for advertisement purposes, but they're not only collecting data anymore, they're deciding what data is being fed to us, and recording our reactions, learning how they can affect and manipulate our behaviour. We know all algorithms feed us controversial, enraging and highly-emotional content in order to drive engagement, but it's more than that. They've discovered how they can influence more or less people to vote. The mere idea of that makes me go cold, but they talk about it like it's just another thing they can do, so why not? Companies who have experimented and learned so much about influencing human behaviour give themselves the right to influence it as they see fit, because why wouldn't they? Since they have the power to do it, and all lawsuits and regulations can't stop them, why wouldn't they make a game out of it?

I can't imagine how many experiments they did before feeling so confident and blase about this and casually influencing the elections, again, seemingly just for the sake of an experiment.

The book compares this type of behaviour manipulation to totalitarianism and surveillance state, and it shows how the population is slowly losing parts of their freedoms without realizing it is even happening. Human behaviour has changed due to online influence, and it keeps changing rapidly, with every new popular website that is influencing human behaviour. They've learned that humans are influenced mostly by behaviour of other humans, and they can decide what kind of content or influence to send our way to get desired results.

I love how the author of the book talks about humanity. She uses the term 'human future', as something we all have the right to, as opposed to future controlled by companies and influences. She describes how regular people were affected by the data collected against their will, and how they fought for their 'right to be forgotten', when google kept displaying their past struggles, damaging their dignity. She also explains the questions people should ask about how society is led: First question is, who knows? Second question, who decides? Third question, who decides who decides? She goes in detail about how the answers are held away from us, and what it does to us. She also touches very deeply on the idea of human freedom!

I recommend this book, even though it will make you feel far less secure and carefree to be online, and using anything google, facebook, twitter or any of their owned services. They are not free, and it's also incorrect to say that we're the product of them, but we are the source of the raw materials they collect in order to gain results.

Mutant Mayhem spoilers

It’s such a small moment and maybe I just have brain rot or something but in the beginning when Splinter is talking abt why he hates humans it’s Mikey specifically that chimes in with that little “you don’t know that.” And just UGH

Even just by his tone you can tell that he knows his words aren’t going to change anything because they’ve had this conversation too many times. But also Mikey was the one Splinter almost lost that day, like if Splinter was any slower Mikey would’ve been gone.

And you just know in the minds of children Mikey equated their isolation from humans as being his fault because he almost got ran over as a baby.

Like I don’t wanna say it because sometimes leads to unnecessary angst, but children who grow up isolated from everyone else believing that they can’t confide in their parent often blame themselves for their parents decisions.

Donnie and Raph back talk and make fun of Splinter the most but Mikey does it like once and Leo does it never. So you can tell Leo and Mikey don’t get upset with their father, they get upset with themselves for the way things are and I just

jay went to clown school. let’s talk about that

supernatural s1e16 shadow (w. eric kripke)

aka the first time i had a full-tilt meltdown over this show.

the thing about deku is that dudebros hate him until he's doing something stereotypically GOAT-worthy like acting like a badass and evading the law and not letting his emotions slip through and it's like... yes. he did do that. he does do that. and that's probably why dudebros latch onto him nowadays because they want to be him, especially because so many of them think that deku and ochako and/or other female characters are destined to be together (through entirely shallow reasons) — but they miss the point.

his inability, or rather his lack of desire to, unlock deeper, more vulnerable, more selfish emotions is not because he's the so-called GOAT, the pinnacle of the sigma grindset bullshit masculinity by hiding his feelings and getting results in an edgy, emotionally unavailable way. no. it's because he cares too much, not too little. he cares so strongly, so aggressively, so softly, so painfully, for the people around him. he's the idealistic version of a hero because he cares, more than anyone, to the point where he'll break his body to pieces. and he projects those emotions outward so much, he doesn't leave any of that care for himself. he chooses not to address selfish thoughts and moments because he's not the one who deserves them. which is why even when he was in his super edgy, dark vigilante look, he was motivated not by anything superficial like money or success, but his own powerful feelings towards helping others. deku is, through and through, a deconstruction of the stoic, apathetic, violence-familiar, strictly goal-oriented view of toxic masculinity. he fights and kicks villain butt because he cares. he also cries and breaks down and smiles and loves with all the warmth in his heart because he cares.

and i think it's really funny that even when deku is "the GOAT" for his surface level grindset outlook, he's still just deku. the deku dudebros would complain about for crying too much and being a wimp is the same deku as the one who selflessly defeated villains during his vigilante era. he didn't "man up" and do a total 180 mentally, he just happens to have layers to his emotional ineptitude. it fucking rocks. not like dudebros would have the brain capacity to understand that, though

Both lesson 12 and lesson 19 in NB are actually great reminders that OG timeline Lucifer would absolutely pretend like nothing happened after MC's disappearance and that he is in fact completely unaffected by it all, maybe even distancing and isolating himself entirely from everyone else if he can't keep up the act, meanwhile behind closed doors he is completely falling apart because his pride just won't. let. him. be. vulnerable.

something really gets to me about eiffel and hera talking to themselves while addressing each other - in am i alone now? and the watchtower in particular. i can't say this to you, but you're still the person i want to tell it to. i know there's no way you can hear me, but if you can...

eiffel talks to himself a lot, and he is very used to being alone with no one paying much attention to the things he says, so i'm not sure he ever realized exactly how much until he was on the hephaestus. in the early days of the mission, i imagine hera responded to a lot of eiffel's asides and sort of embarrassed them both. and then that sort of... shifted. their relationship shifted, they got comfortable being around each other, and eiffel's conversations with himself started including hera, too. i like the idea of that as an establishing moment: that, at some point, there was a first time eiffel said something in an empty room, and hera was so used to him talking to himself that she didn't realize it was meant for her, and he asked her, "hera? are you there?"

i imagine hera still talked to eiffel, too, when they all thought he was dead. with each day increasingly longer and more difficult, that she would vent her frustrations to the empty comms room the same way he would've encouraged her to when he was there. she can't talk to anyone the way she can talk to him, and they just... keep talking to each other, even when they can't. they are so much a part of each other, the voice of encouragement and comfort in each other's heads. for so long, all they can really do for each other is talk, and they maintain that connection even in absence. they ask each other "are you there?" like reaching for each other's hands in the dark.

[ID: an uncoloured drawing for a panel next to the publicized version. They're both from the comic Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #194. In them, Batman is shown from the waist up. He's looking at Jim Gordon, who's off panel, with a penitent expression after being accused of something he secretly did do. He has his palm pressed against his chest and is blocking the bat emblem as his other hand is clasped ontop of it. In the initial drawing, there's a halo floating above his head as well as several tiny hearts mixed in with the lights that surround him. In the publicized panel, the hearts and halo has been removed and two speech bubbles have been added. He's in front of a terra rose background and is starting to say, “Jim, I don't even know what you're...” But Jim cuts him off, saying, “Stop it. I'm tired of this.”

The third photo is a description of the drawing from the artist's (Seth Fisher) website. It reads: This is another page that the DC editors changed: no halos or hearts around Batman, no matter how (disingenuously) contrite he is. In the final edition, the halo and heart in the center bottom frame have been excised.]

Asshole Things Ambrose Has Said/Done #8: Describe Cyrus' relationship with Malistaire as "odd" then sends a child, essentially a stranger to Cyrus, with no business with being involved in their family issues, to extract information out of Cyrus on how to kill his brother (a grieving man)

WTFFF I thought thirteen would be my new girl crush love of my life heart eyes wife you-came-after-twelve-you-must-be-better-than-they're-all-saying bbygirl and then I had to sit down and watch as she told a man who (if he were not a murderer, of course) literally every regeneration before her would've LOVED and FULLY SUPPORTED that "the systems aren't the problem. how people use and exploit the system, that's the problem. people like you" </33333 !?!?

.

"I blew out a city by myself. A block, decimated." "Intentionally?" "No."

i'd rather be friendless than to constantly have my boundaries disrespected

robins but ranked by how quickly they seem to have gotten to a "bruce is my dad" stage

1- jason. thats his dad. bruce didnt really have much competition given that jasons dad was practically nonexistent in his life.

2- damian. blood relation. not very enthusiastic about it after he bonds with dick and gets a taste of what a guardian can be, but still accepts it to some extent. same cant be said of bruce who insists on being Bad Weird about the whole thing.

3- tim. yes he did make up a whole fake uncle to dodge the adoption draft, but more so (from what he tells dick at least) bc he saw how messy/raw things were between dick and bruce and he didnt wanna make dick feel bad if bruce adopted him at that moment.

4- dick. he and bruce are so messy its not ok. even when bruce gave him the adoption papers it was so. they are trying so hard to be father and son but it does Not work for a variety of reasons. from personal conflicts, to dick having had the most loving original family of any of the others, to them wanting to be equals but already not being able to healthily manage that with the ex mentor-mentee relationship let alone a father-son one. the cant even navigate their former hero-sidekick dynamic their asses are NOT gonna be able to create a familial connection there. at BEST they might work up to brothers, but there's way too much history for father and son.