Blog 8 - Antiwar

Right, so I've looked at both sites. I'm not sure if it's because of the bad wifi, but the article on American Conservative you sent us doesn't actually work. I'll refresh and refresh and hit "load more" but there is nothing. I'm going to base this on just the sites in general. I'm going to try to go into this with an open mind, but as someone who does lean left, my thoughts might have unintentional bias. (Especially on one literally called "American Conservative")

So let's start with Antiwar. Right off the bat, it looks like it was created in 1997 and hasn't been updated since, design-wise. It's not aesthetically pleasing either, like some retro websites look cool, but the color palette on this with the fonts and the way it's haphazardly sorted makes me want to internally scream!

Getting over the utter dysfunctionality that is the main page, it's actually not the worst when it comes to sorting. You see things from a lot of countries on there, so it might be a good launch point for looking at international news.

They also have a nice tribute to fallen soldiers. It doesn't show their names, and the dead people are in caskets, but it is nice knowing that while they are anti-war, they're not anti-veteran or anti-soldier.

The number of sources they use is INSANE. A lot of what they send is links to articles for other sites. It isn't stuff that I generally see and it feels like I'm jumping into the middle of a chapter book. Like, I jump into chapter 10 and miss all of the exposition and I have no idea the meaning of the plot.

So now, I am going back onto the American Conservative and the first thing I see is about some dude named Abimael Guzman who apparently killed capitalists, but what really caught my eye was something about vaccine lotteries and how they failed. As someone who lives somewhere in Ohio where they did that, it sparked an interest and I clicked. Honestly, I felt like it wasn't the best way they could've done it. I got vaccinated pretty early on, but using taxpayer money for something that isn't going to inherently benefit everyone just seems like a waste. 

There has also been research done on how the lottery exploits lower-income households. It can come across as Mike DeWine exploiting poor people to take a vaccine that they may not want to take just so they can have the chance for money. 

Reading the article, I totally see where it comes from and this person seems to be looking at both sides of things. The only real confusing thing is how they want the government to take away the ability for corporations to enforce vaccine mandates, even though ... shouldn't republicans be not wanting the government to intervene? That's their whole basis, is it not? Granted, political parties are not just on a linear plane of left to right. There's a test you can take to see where you fall on the graph.

So, I lost my exact results in a depression purge of my pictures but I was around where it was on the left side when I took it last year. I probably should retake it because anyone who doesn't have character development in a year scares me and I'm sure I've changed a little bit.

So I wanted to find stuff on war since that's what you asked for. But as soon as I got onto the main page, I didn't see anything on war. It just seems like a bunch of social issues (and the article in the top right made me gag) I feel like a lot of conservatives do look at this because the interface doesn't make me want to scream and force whoever to take a design class. 

I clicked on another article and the way they seem to alienate people in California in the first couple of paragraphs speaks for itself. Grow up. It makes me think that articles are all written by different people and whoever wrote the vaccination lottery is definitely not who wrote this one. Only half the article didn't seem like a joke\slam on people in California.

But I FINALLY found war articles recommended. I clicked on the Poland one and honestly, it's so long that it lost my interest halfway through, but I skimmed anyways. There's literally nothing about invading Poland and it's all social issues. I'm not Polish so I don't care. That being said, this blog is supposed to be war and all this website happens to be is just conservative analysis. I want the basics of something and I don't get it, depending on whoever wrote it. I also see stuff about LGBTQ rights and I don't feel like reading about my own existence being debated upon so I will just stop there.

So overall, why do I think people don't read these? I actually think American Conservative gets a fair amount of traffic. As biased as some of it seems, people tend to like confirmation bias. The website also looks polished, professional, and good. It doesn't look like it hasn't been updated since 1997. 

I personally am someone who wants to understand why people think the way they do. As much as some of them dehumanize both myself and those I care about, I want to understand why. I want to understand how people have hatred in their hearts and how to prevent it if I were to ever have kids or someone I'm mentoring. 

I also don't think all conservatives are in the group above. I think a lot of people just think differently about how the government should be run and I think those dissenting opinions are very important. 

I think the current state of half of the country hating whoever's the president every 4 years isn't sustainable, and I think it will eventually get to a point of war. I don't want that. I think war is costly in lives, life, and money. For those who die, that's it. For those who survive, they have to deal with mental illnesses and loss of time doing what they love or furthering their careers. Their lives are put on pause. 

There's also the issue of us just not having money and using so much money on hurting other innocent people in other countries that have nothing to do with their government instead of helping us and our own citizens with money. War seems like a bartering of one's own citizens and it's wrong.

There's also foreign affairs, such as the fact that literally any time any Middle Easten country want to stop using USD for their oil, the US gets mad at them and targets them. It's because of the whole USD not being backed by anything physical so the government wants their currency to be backed by oil so other countries accept it. That being said, maybe fix your problems from within before yelling at others.

War is depressing. War is overwhelming. War is mentally taxing. This whole thing has made my mental health die inside. I think I've covered why people don't want to read about war. 

 Age Of A.I.

color to change to at end: #A8FFFC China's basic surveillance state is absolutely terrifying. My roommate from freshman year grew up in Shang-hai and it's really weird there. Their social media is all different, and I believe they all have social networks\chats specifically for the government to not watch them. The government watches literally everything they do or say, and if they do something really bad, they "disappear".It just seems like privacy, or even the illusion of privacy is a joke. At least in America, we have some semblance of privacy. A.I. is either nonexistent or less structured. 

Where I grew up, my town is small and old. Everyone there is also old and very conservative (I didn't fit in at all.) We do NOT use our tax money effectively at all and our town prioritises their anti-woman agenda over the kids in public schools. We would always have threats every year that "oh if the levy doesn't pass, we wont be able to do band!" But our levvies would always pass. Every year. Then the schools would do unnessicary things with the money like demolishing a bunch of perfectly good buildings to build new schools that were apparently just worse. (I say apparently because my younger friends were impacted by this and the class behind mine was the last class to not be.)
Why am I talking about this? The school didn't prioritise things well. My town was the same way. We took out random parking spaces to make a random crosswalk in the middle of the road to "appeal to old people," which ok, but you're making them park farther away and taking out parking spots for them. My town also did the most tasteless thing ever. They put in a bike trail that's supposed to help the people who live in the projects and might not have cars. The bike trail doesn't go to any stores, nor does it even reach the projects. It's a random bike trail that isn't even a mile long.It just seems preformative and gross.

I rambled a lot, but it's to prove the point that my town... they don't seem the kind to just have some kind of A.I. thing. We don't even have sensors on the traffic lights. In bigger places like NYC or LA, they might do some kind of A.I. thing, but I don't see it. There would be no way to document everyone in the country, especially with all the immigrants. China seems to be a lot more tightly knit on that sort of thing.

Speaking of China, the social credit thing seems so wrong to me.It's legitimately just a way for people to be rated on how well they fit in with the government agenda. 

When our founding fathers said "all men created equal," it really meant "if you're a white male with property, you're created equal." That is inherently unequal. Even now, not everyone is created equal in America and anyone who thinks everyone is created equally either grew up super privileged, lived under a rock, or are just that incredibly self absorbed\unaware\stupid. Literally if you have diabetes, you have to depend on medication that is so expensive that if you don't have money, you're forcing yourself to choose between that and food. If you get hurt, you're in debt for years because of the screwed up pricing at hospitals. Basically, if you are born poor, good luck. You're not going to get as much as someone who's not. If you're a woman, you tend to be taken less seriously, and if you're a BIPOC, you have to worry about the perceptions of others on you, including law enforcement. It sucks. This is like in China except there, this concept is knowingly reinforced and encouraged by the government.

Oh Facebook, Amazon, and their ability to stalk you. See, the fact that bots can see what you post and analyze it, the idea of it doesn't scare me much. Maybe it's just that I'm numb to a lot of things. That being said, the fact that Facebook influenced your mood by your feed and manipulates people really just annoys me. Something else is a bit annoying too. I'm gonna preface this with the fact that I lean left. That being said, while Facebook is a private company, they apparently hide republican ideas. Granted, I think if you're homophobic, you can post about it. Then people like me can come in and block you and your sad sad existence from our lives. 

I'm gonna be honest, my mental health has been really just bad this week and this Age of A.I. documentary really isn't helping and is in fact making it worse. So I'm just gonna stop here. Sorry there isn't a lot of pictures or anything, I just actively do not want to do this blog for my own sake. I just don't need to talk about the doom and gloom of the future because I really have no hope for it anyways. 

Blog 9 - EOTO 2

DeepFake 

So, what is a deepfake? That is a convincing (or less convincing) fake video made with A.I. It's something people can make with free software, and it isn't hard to do. Above here is a Nido deepfake. There are many ways to make them, as my partner, when making this, used code. There are also free sites you can use as well. Basically, you just need a Youtube video with a face present the whole time and a head-on shot of someone. You put them together and create funny little clips like these. 

So, unfortunately, there's a lot worse to this than good. I could take a video of a voice impersonator saying something inflammatory or untrue that could destroy someone's reputation, get a picture of someone, and then paste them together. For instance, someone made Obama say that Trump was a dipshit. Obama wouldn't say that publically, but if someone wanted to make people hate or like Obama or any other celebrity or politician on false pretenses, they could just make a deepfake.

There's also the problem of people using deepfakes to violate people online. Deepfakes are rarely consentual, but some people go farther and will paste someone's face on naked pictures and videos of other people. Helen Mort's nudes were leaked online, except she had never taken nudes. Someone had taken non-explicit photos from her private accounts, including some where she was underaged, and encouraged people to put them on naked videos. Helen felt understandably humiliated, and this can happen to literally anyone. It's likely more common with famous people. 

That being said, I think everyone remembers where they'd be in school, and some unhealthy relationship would end and nudes would get leaked. Literally, when I was trying to find a link to provide as an example for this, I found actual links to literal child porn. But deepfakes might be the new age of leaking people's nudes. It might not be enough to never send people your nudes. I know I've never sent nudes. (I'm not saying this because this is a school related thing. I genuinely have bad enough trust issues that in my head, those who love me could hate me overnight, and I rarely feel safe even opening up to someone) 

Literally, my high school had this creep, I believe his name was Brandon. Brandon was nothing short of a self-centered, self-righteous manchild who had the intelligence of a toothbrush. He was sexist, racist, and homophobic as well. 

He had gotten in trouble already when I recorded him tearing down GSA posters and when he sent me a video of "him" flushing them down the toilet, I was able to determine that he had a female accomplice based on the fact that there was a pad\tampon trashcan in the background of the shot, and she eventually got in trouble too. He ended up not being very happy with me and threatening me over Instagram and telling me to kill myself. When I blocked his account, he made 3 more to keep harassing me, and I'd just keep blocking him. Eventually, he went away, but he is the kind of dude who, if the technology was invented, and he had more brains than a rubber band would've totally done deepfakes on myself and other people as well. 

He was a senior and over 18 at the time, and this is when Snapchat was introducing geostories, and the perimeter was around the school. Everyone on Snapchat who went to the school could watch the story and post to the colossal bitchfest. He ended up posting on there about how "if you have nudes, add me and send them." No one took him seriously, but sure enough, the next day, I'm seeing a bunch of people's boobs, butts, and other bits. He ended up just posting them to the public story for everyone to see. Keep in mind, a lot of these people I knew were underaged. Needless to say, he actually got arrested that night and expelled. People are crazy.

Something that is also wildly harmful with deepfakes? The ability to manipulate international political discourse. Do you remember way back in the day when Kim Jong Un was talking about how he'd nuke us? Well, imagine if someone had made a deepfake of him or Obama saying they were sending nukes, it would start a war before anyone would analyze the clip and realize it was fake. 

Blog 7 - Technology taught to me by someone else

Technology Taught To Me By Another 

Right, so as a little kid, I'll be honest. I pretty much taught myself everything basic when it came to technology. We didn't have much money at the time (as you can see by this pretty basic setup in the "computer room".) I remember we had Windows 95 at first, as I remember the starting sound distinctly. My parents didn't know much about technology back in the day, and apparently, I figured out how to lock them out of the computer, and I would do it repeatedly. I was such a devious child.

 However, what we had for a lot of my early childhood was Windows XP. Being a little kid, I basically taught myself how to animate PowerPoint, how to download and play games, and even MS Paint. I was a huge player of MMOs until my favorite one shut down.

I even taught myself how to do art. MS Paint can produce good art, but it's hard to. It's extremely basic and your tool options are limited. The site I use is a free one called Pixlr. It's a lot like Adobe Photoshop except it's free. It's hard to get inspiration to draw these days because of my declining mental health, but here is an OC I drew to the right named Talia. My friend who graduated from college with an art degree said I'm good, so I guess I am? 

But this blog is supposed to be about things others taught me with technology. I have no idea if this is supposed to be about communication or just general technology. So I'll just do general tech. 

In high school, I took a class called music tech where I could make music electronically. I absolutely loved it. I worked with Ableton Live 9 and 10 when it came out. I used a little mixing thing called a Push. It was my first time working with macOS. It was amazing. I have ADHD and because my grades were so stellar, and I was able to mask really well, I was undiagnosed until early this year. This class was the only class where I could actually focus for the entire class. I had gone through a lot of trauma early on in high school, and this was at the point where I had still not told anyone, and it was hard going through that stuff completely alone and scared, but this class was something I looked forward to as an outlet. I could be creative. I could make music. I could learn and felt like I was actually achieving something, as opposed to my other classes where I would get excellent grades but barely remember the material down the line. In my other classes, I'd not be able to pay attention but I'd understand the material when I'd do homework, do well on the tests, make good grades in the class, and then forget everything I learned. I felt like an impostor, but here, I was actually learning by doing the thing and I could be creative as well. Unfortunately, all the stuff I made is saved on a hard drive at home and home is 8 hours away for me. I miss this class so much

Something else that helped me with technology, or more specifically, someone else is my partner. I'm generally attracted to girls, but sometimes, on the rare chance, I'll think of a guy as attractive, and now I'm dating one. This is his setup on the picture to the right. (Yes I bought him the neon lights hehehehehehe)

 Growing up, I was friends with the weird people and not generally the people who were good at technology, because the technology wizards were generally rude and had a lot of prejudice. Windows has come a long way from Windows XP and I hadn't realized how much it had. My partner, who is a computer science student showed me a lot. On top of gaming stuff looking cool, he educated me on the basic concepts of what a CPU (or processor) is, or a GPU, or RAM, and what it all means. I really don't have extensive knowledge of technology by any means, but think I know more than the average person. I know how to research better and not just buy the first thing I see because it's the cheapest, because cheap doesn't always mean a good deal for what you get. There are a lot of components that go into each thing, and it sometimes depends on the thing. I usually will still go to him just to check that I'm right, or about stuff that I don't know. The complexity of technology in computers has grown exponentially over the last 20 years, and much quicker in the last 10.