https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

The panopticon is a design of institutional building with an inbuilt system of control, originated by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single corrections officer, without the inmates knowing whether or not they are being watched.

*Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates’ cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched motivates them to act as though they are all being watched at all times. They are effectively compelled to self-regulation. The architecture consists of a rotunda with an inspection house at its centre. From the centre, the manager or staff are able to watch the inmates. Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, sanatoriums, and asylums. He devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a panopticon prison, so the term now usually refers to that. *

I genuinely expected this to be a metaphor for foreign drug prices or agricultural rights. But nope, just angry farmers all the way down.

Basic, but they have to start somewhere.

Dr Steve Brule, for your shoulder health…!

I saw a late screening of it as it made its way through the festival cricuit this summer. I fell asleep within the first few minutes and woke up as it was wrapping up. I still wonder if I was snoring.

Finally, a self-driving car with actual intelligence.

Trotting out a bunch of nay-saying critics was already of fairly questionable taste to begin with. Having them be made up is just plain hilarious.

Also, the narration was pretty odd. I wonder if this was even intended to be released at all.

He’s also still getting tons of regular work outside sci-fi. He’s got a comedy with Paul Reiser coming out later this year that looks pretty funny, too.

https://youtu.be/lVSBJsxWtUo

He doesn’t need to go back to Trek, and I’m glad for that.

Regarding Kate Mulgrew, Prodigy made a lot of sense for her given her talents as a voice actor. (RIP Infinity Train)

I think it technically counts as Spring, but Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction has me enraptured.

But if we’re talking about Summer alone, hands down, Dungeon People.

Asking the person you’re debating to look up your own citations is certainly one way to converse. But ok, let’s go for it.

In Aug 2023, Forbes published an article describing the proposal of “unfettered access” you referred to:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/08/21/draft-tiktok-cfius-agreement/

In June 2024, the Washington Post reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) turned down the proposal and includes some broad reporting as to why:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tiktok-offered-an-extraordinary-deal-the-u-s-government-took-a-pass/ar-BB1nfAcE

The article isn’t very technical, but it mentions some interesting responsibility angles that the US wouldn’t want to back themselves into:

• throwing open some, but not all, doors to server operations and source code creates a mountain of work for the government to inspect, which would be a workload nightmare
• the US government’s deepest concerns seem to be about what data is going out (usage insights on the virtuous side and clipboard/mic/camera monitoring on the ultra shady side) and data coming in (bespoke content intended to influence US residents of China-aligned goals). Usage insights are relatively benign from national security perspective (especially when you can just mandate that people in important roles aren’t permitted to use it). Shady monitoring should be discoverable through app source code monitoring, which you can put the app platforms (Apple, Google, whoever else) on the hook for if they continue to insist on having walled app gardens (and if you trust them at all). The content shaping is harder to put your finger on though, since it’s super easy to abstract logic as far out as you need to avoid detection. “Here, look at these 50M lines of code that run stateside, and yeah, there are some API calls to stuff outside the sandbox. Is that such a big deal?” Spoiler: it is a big deal.
• the US can’t hold Byte Dance accountable so long as it remains in China. Let’s say the US agreed to all this, spent all the effort to uncover some hidden shady activity that they don’t like (after an untold amount of time has passed). What then? They can’t legally go after Byte Dance’s foreign entity. The US can prosecute the US employees, but it’s totally possible to organize in such a way that leaves those domestic employees free from misdeeds, leaving prosecutors unable to enforce misdeeds fairly. It’d be a mess.

The second article explains this somewhat, but I’m admittedly painting some conjecture on top regarding how a malicious actor could behave. I’ve got no evidence that Byte Dance is actually doing any of that.

But going back to the “influence the public” angle, I’m struggling to see how different TikTok is versus NHK America (Japan’s American broadcasts) or RT (American media from the Russian standpoint) aside from being wildly more successful and popular. But I guess that’s all there is to it.

I’d prefer our leaders also be transparent with us regarding their concerns about TikTok. The reductive “because China!!1!” argument is not compelling on its own.

Do you have any citation for that?

Does ByteDance publish TikTok’s transmission protocol to demonstrate transparency?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol

Old school Darkwing Duck fans really owe it to themselves to check out the most recent Duck Tales animated series. It is very much made with the folks who grew up with the 1990s Disney Afternoon in mind, with many out-of-canon cameos that will make you smile and an outstanding voice cast (lead by David Tennant as Scrooge McDuck).

It’s also very clear that the creators were begging to make a Darkwing Duck reboot all along, but Disney wouldn’t let them, so they just crammed him into the show anyway.

I’m just bummed for Tig Notaro.

Shyamalan has been all about self-parody since Lady in the Water (after stumbling into it in The Village).

Critics really think he’s striving for more and landing on being ridiculous, but I’ve just accepted that this is what he does. This is him doing what he does.

I can find satisfaction in that. I know what I’m setting myself up for when I watch one of his films now; nothing more.

Thanos was introduced in a post credits scene after the first Avengers film (2012), a solid 6 years prior to Infinity War. Marvel takes their time. And with good reason; extra time to vet folks and change course if needed.

The element of sketch was always directly proportional to the amount of anger and physicality that popped up as games ended. The angry shouting, slapping/punching the arcade cabinets, shaking the pinball games, that’s a sign of people with problems.

ski-bop dooo…

Thank you for pointing out the full results; I’m a goof and I missed that.

I really think Dededede is suffering from mediocre translations. It feels like there’s a ton of subtext that isn’t making its way into the subtitles. Hopefully it’ll find its way towards a fansub community to help fill in the gaps and context clues.

No Dededede? No Dungeon People? I’m disappointed.