Heir of Sunfire - Introduction

Bron is not the protagonist of this story.  As a random peasant near an enchanted wood, he would be fine with that, but while he is not the protagonist, he is central to its resolution and two enchanted talking mice show up to enlighten him about why he IS important and frame the telling of the rest of the tale of Michael, Heir of Sunfire.

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Project Nimby - Project Nimby

First of seven stories about Post Humanism from the Chapbook of Water and Glass.  Ted was a human and Bob, his Cactus owner, had to make some....alterations to get him on Planet Metmetmetrion.+

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Poetry

 Sucker 

by Emmit Other

I have had my sanity questioned

My morality questioned

My memory questioned

My honor questioned

My word questioned

My value questioned

My purpose questioned

My theology questioned

My motive questioned

By allies and blood and strangers alike

So much so

That I joined in

Until that voice 

Was proven to work for a liar

Who did not keep their word

Now the demon sits in a box

Unable to torment me

About irrelevant opinions of celestial liars

Divine oathbreakers

Or any servant thereof

But while at great cost

He did be a boon

For I dont do guilt

But By questioning myself

Always

I reap a kind of wisdom

In genuinely trying hard

To learn from others mistakes

But despite it all

I still fell for flim flam

A well placed psychological manipulation

A false choice

A blasphemous descration of the sacred

But I did penance

And burned the link

But my dignity still suffers

Suffers still

Indeed

[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 3 - Scene 1 and 2

 Scene 1 - A black screen appears where the word “Solutions” slowly fades in.

VO: We could lecture you on what we think needs to be done to fix the situation, and its a big list, but we went out and talked to some other people, and this is what they said.

[Images of footage of other people giving their ideas on fixing the technology situation for 5-10 minutes]

Scene 2 - Screen shows black

Words: Did we forget someone?

Words: Someone that everyone is always talking about?

Words: Oh well.

[Roll Credits]

[Mock cover of You’re So Vain but the words are “I bet you think this film is about you” with Elon sneaking on from the sides again and again]

[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 2, Scene 6 (Continued)

 [Images of Psychology]

VO: Psychology is a powerful science that is a bit younger than our so called ‘hard’ sciences like Chemistry, Physics or even regular biology.  There is a lot about the brain and human behavior we’ve learned, but despite being inexact, because we as complex social animals are complex; there is still a lot that has been learned.  We are living organisms; we respond to stimulus, and governments and universities have poured billions of dollars into understanding what it is that makes people tick.

[Image of Stanford and Milgram Experiments]

VO: Two of the most notorious examples of human experimentation in psychology were the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments.  In Milgram, they connected a person up to electric wires to determine how much shock someone was willing to do under orders from an authority figure.  And let's just say it wasn't pretty.  In the Stanford Prison experiment, they had participants become prisoners and guards.  The Guards began to act more and more authoritarian, and things got worse and worse for the prisoners until after six days, the whole thing was shut down.  Now, some justifiably question a lot of things about these experiments but one thing that did happen was reform requiring more consent from people before they took part in one of these experiments.  Meaning, to be part of a psychological experiment, you need to consent to participate, and it has to be informed consent.

[Image of Facebook and addiction]

VO: And back to Facebook.  There is a popular element in software called Gamification.  It means that you get tiny little rewards for continued behavior; and facebook does this masterfully.  Again, remember the little games they used to have like Mafiawars or Farmtown where you were there to click and click and click to getahead.  Eventually, Facebook screwed Zynga, the company that made those games over when their research showed them that they had people hooked enough that they could make people click on outrage or fear instead.  Make no mistake, Facebook knew exactly what it was doing when it made the timeline less about your friends and more about conspiracies and outrage factories because by manipulating your emotions, you got addicted and made them more money.

[Image of Science images]

VO: But lets remember what an experiment is.  It means you have an idea; like Rocks can levitate things with their mind…and then use a hypothesis to test if rocks can do that.  You set things up, watch, repeat, and have a control group of say…plastic rocks that dont levitate things.  The point is, you have a theory, you test that theory and look at the result.

[Images of Teens and Children]

VO: Officially, teens as young as 13 can sign up for facebook, but realistically they are a lot younger than that.  But even 13 is a problem.  

[Images of Southpark and Eula episode]

VO: We’ve all read horror stories about the EULA, even if most people still dont actually read them.  But since our corrupt courts and captured alphabet organizations are useless against Big Tech; they can put illegal and unethical things in there and not get challenged on it. 

[Images of Clockwork Orange and Medeival Torture]

VO: But it doesn't matter what they put there; a 13 year old can’t give consent.  They simply can’t.  There is no country in the world where a 13 year old can, without their parents, given consent to take part in a psychological experiment.  Do you see? We know Facebook tests its psychologically addictive content on control groups to see what is more engaging..ie addictive, and we know that there are 13 year olds using it.  Millions upon millions of them.  That makes Facebook the largest unregulated experiment in human  history; and no one is taking them to task for this.  

[Images of Regulatory Agencies]

VO: All of these people have examined or in some cases even fined Facebook, but no one is thinking of the children.  If we won’t even enforce existing law, how are we going to ever hold these giants to account?

Taking a break from Social Media

 The indifference of so many to what WotC is doing to the OGL has made me literally physically ill.  I am very close to finishing Army of Fire so I am taking a break from Social Media so I can hunker down and finish Army of Fire and then let it rest while I move on to the Grenademan sequel.

Expressing empathy for a corporation over small companies, artists and creators is disgusting.  "Well its their property" ignores my property and tells me that any system that lets the rich, the large and the powerful take from the small and brainwash so many into siding with sociopaths is a system that shall not stand.

2023 Realignment

I discuss plans and status of writing and podcast projects for 2023.

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