Speaker 1: Welcome Tonightcall a production of My Heart Radio. It's ten
Speaker 1: thirty two pm in cyberspace and you're listening tonight. Call
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome tonight call a show for your
Speaker 1: strange days and lonely nights. I am Molly Lambert and
Speaker 1: with me are Emily Ashida and Tess Lynch. Hello. We're
Speaker 1: going to start off with the question that's been on
Speaker 1: everyone's mind post by radio and friend Justine. What is
Speaker 1: Swedish death cleaning? Have you guys ever heard of Swedish
Speaker 1: death cleaning? Finitely? Really? Yeah, it's like the most metal
Speaker 1: kind of clean. No. I I had heard about it
Speaker 1: because it's like I feel like people were talking about it,
Speaker 1: like around the time that Marie Condo was was blowing
Speaker 1: up to similar via Justine, Swedish death cleaning is basically
Speaker 1: like clean your house like you are about to die,
Speaker 1: because you are get all your documents in one place
Speaker 1: and throw out all your trinkets and crap. I realized
Speaker 1: I've been doing this my whole life. I leave my
Speaker 1: house each morning assuming I'll never make it back. Thank you, Justine.
Speaker 1: So there was an article on BuzzFeed about this for
Speaker 1: a while. I oh, there's a book written by a
Speaker 1: Swedish woman who says that she is between eighty and
Speaker 1: a hundred years old, but does not get more specific
Speaker 1: than that. Umar to Magnussen, there you go. I had
Speaker 1: not written that down. So I guess the word for
Speaker 1: death cleaning in Swedish is those saddening. Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And but I thought the most interesting. I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, this is a great idea, and I am
Speaker 1: going to go home and do it, although I hope
Speaker 1: I don't die. Um. But one of the things I
Speaker 1: thought was really great about it was that she suggests
Speaker 1: in the book that you make a throwaway box, which
Speaker 1: is stuff that is sentimental to you but would not
Speaker 1: have any meaning for other people. Stuff that's all my stuff.
Speaker 1: I have a mailbox of just like printed out old
Speaker 1: emails from like or something. But I was like, this
Speaker 1: is a brilliant idea because you're basically giving your surviving
Speaker 1: family members or whomever permission to look at it. And
Speaker 1: then Marie Condo would be like, bye, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to keep this. So um. I have a friend who
Speaker 1: recently found her deceased family members diaries, and she was like,
Speaker 1: it's so hard because if he didn't want anyone to
Speaker 1: read his diaries, he would have destroyed them, right, But
Speaker 1: then I'm holding the diary and I'm like, do I
Speaker 1: open the diary and read the diary? Would be so
Speaker 1: mad if someone read my diary. So I guess the
Speaker 1: idea with Swedish death cleaning is to think ask yourself
Speaker 1: those questions of like do I want someone to read
Speaker 1: my diary? And if you do, you put it in
Speaker 1: the throwaway box, and if you don't, you destroy it.
Speaker 1: That's super smart. That's what are you gonna do with
Speaker 1: your diaries? Exactly where they are? I I have been
Speaker 1: thinking about it since I read this thing from my friend.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I definitely wouldn't want anyone to read them,
Speaker 1: but I also feel like I don't want to throw
Speaker 1: them away until I'm like very close to death, but
Speaker 1: I won't know probably like when I'm going to die.
Speaker 1: So I feel like this is why historically have been
Speaker 1: it's been really hard to motivate to keep a diary
Speaker 1: for this exact reason, because I'm like, what do I
Speaker 1: do with it? It's really I mean, I kept a
Speaker 1: diary from when I was seven until right around the
Speaker 1: time I got married, and so I have like all
Speaker 1: the volumes of my and they're all organized by year
Speaker 1: and were like thing to have, though I don't like
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know what to do with it. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, it's like cool for yourself to be
Speaker 1: able to go back if there a signal you can
Speaker 1: give that's like burn the diaries. Now, I think I
Speaker 1: have to put them in a safe where I can
Speaker 1: like press a button and it just explodes inside. I mean,
Speaker 1: put them in a bear suit. Put them in a
Speaker 1: bear suit midsummer them. Um. The one good thing about
Speaker 1: having a diary, though, is then if you have kids,
Speaker 1: going back and reading my diet the first volume of
Speaker 1: my diary from when I was my son's age, is
Speaker 1: so interesting because it's all just like these angry missives
Speaker 1: about how pissed I am at my parents, and I
Speaker 1: was like, whoa Like I just hated them, like at times,
Speaker 1: I mean the times when I wrote in my diary
Speaker 1: it was always hating someone. Also, another thing about being
Speaker 1: an only child, you don't have a sibling who you
Speaker 1: can just exactly your complaints about mom and dad. That's all.
Speaker 1: You got to have a sibling so you can be like, man,
Speaker 1: mom and Dad were being so annoying today and like
Speaker 1: I was also there read Let's Union. Actually I've never
Speaker 1: kept a diary, but my brother has like amazing recall
Speaker 1: of everything that ever happened to us as children, who'll like,
Speaker 1: tell me if I was at a story he's telling.
Speaker 1: I'll be like, I don't think I was there. He'll
Speaker 1: be like, yes, you where, you did this in this
Speaker 1: and you ate this. It's also my worst nightmare. I mean,
Speaker 1: this sounds great, but also I would hate that. I
Speaker 1: want to be able to like bleach my brain of
Speaker 1: certain things. I yeah, the whole the Swedish death cleanything.
Speaker 1: I mean some of it. I think that some of
Speaker 1: it is sort of generational where it feels I mean
Speaker 1: not just like oh I'm thinking about death like in
Speaker 1: that way, but that like the amount of stuff you've
Speaker 1: amassed and the quality of that stuff, Like like most
Speaker 1: of the stuff that would end up in my box
Speaker 1: is just stuff that represents the majority of my possessions,
Speaker 1: because I am not yet of the age where I
Speaker 1: own very much furniture or anything at all. Like it's
Speaker 1: all just like junk, like ticket stubs and bracelets from things,
Speaker 1: and like there's somehow still so much of it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's somehow becomes just as burden. Some is like a credenza. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whenever I move, I'm like, at least I don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, and then I'm like, I have
Speaker 1: so much stuff. It's dumb, little stuff that packs very easily,
Speaker 1: and yet it's impossible to go through anytime you have
Speaker 1: to move. It's yeah, I think we're all trying not
Speaker 1: to buy clothes right now. Yeah, it's I don't want
Speaker 1: to accumulate clothes either. I find that, Like, um my
Speaker 1: mom was in town and she ended up giving me
Speaker 1: some clothes and they were I ended up liking them
Speaker 1: a lot when I put them on, but I was
Speaker 1: kind of looking at them being like, if I had
Speaker 1: fifty less clothes, then laundry would be so much more simple.
Speaker 1: I would be able to like fold everything the right way.
Speaker 1: But I have such a hard time getting rid of
Speaker 1: especially clothes, that then when new stuff comes in, I'm
Speaker 1: just like, I think there's also this minimalist fantasy that
Speaker 1: people have of like if I only had five things
Speaker 1: and that's all I needed, But it's actually very hard
Speaker 1: to live that way. I have that with almost everything
Speaker 1: except for clothes and sort of a maximalist when it
Speaker 1: comes to clothes, and I'm very much like, oh, I
Speaker 1: can't let go of this. I'll put it in a
Speaker 1: box and then twenty years I'll love it. Like I
Speaker 1: have that with with clothes more than I have with
Speaker 1: other thing. I'm pretty unsentimental about almost everything else. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I should do some Swedish death cleaning. Now I should
Speaker 1: all do it. Yeah, it's a real our listener Oscar,
Speaker 1: who's our Sweden expert, should tell us if Swedish death
Speaker 1: cleaning is like a thing Swedish people actually do or
Speaker 1: this is like marketing for American Further, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like Swedish people in Japanese people. Um, both get like
Speaker 1: the oh, it wouldn't it be wonderful to be so
Speaker 1: clean in Japanese. That's why I like, there's a book
Speaker 1: about tiny apartments and it's like one of the classic
Speaker 1: like coffee books or or um like I don't know,
Speaker 1: little art books. And it's just like these are not
Speaker 1: the pristine Japanese apartments that I feel like our like
Speaker 1: New York apartments. It's the idea of like you keep
Speaker 1: all yourself in a tiny space because you have you
Speaker 1: can just walk outside into a city. Yeah, you still again,
Speaker 1: like however much room there is, it feels like you
Speaker 1: take up oh yeah, and then you have a murphy
Speaker 1: bed probably, which then you have to like make every
Speaker 1: day and then like fast to the wall. I mean
Speaker 1: I would just never do it, Like, let's be real,
Speaker 1: I would never do it. Would you guys ever live
Speaker 1: in a tiny house? I think we've discussed this before. No,
Speaker 1: I no, no, God, I'd have to have a huge,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, psychic break or something in order
Speaker 1: to live in a tiny house. I don't know how
Speaker 1: people with kids live in a tiny house. And I've
Speaker 1: I've read all of these profiles of people who do,
Speaker 1: and it just sounds so difficult. Even people who are
Speaker 1: doing it really successfully have to at some point acknowledge
Speaker 1: the strain it places on your marriage and your kids
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, it's just you're acknowledging like this
Speaker 1: isn't great most of the time. Well, we're going to
Speaker 1: take an ad break real quick, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a very haunted doll. Welcome back.
Speaker 1: We have a quick item that we felt was very nightcall.
Speaker 1: This comes from a local Houston News site, and they
Speaker 1: posted a saga last week about a talking Elsa doll
Speaker 1: from the movie Frozen that is one of the most
Speaker 1: compelling cases for a doll hunting that I've ever read.
Speaker 1: Um This doll, originally when it was bought by the
Speaker 1: family I think six years ago, spoke some phrases from
Speaker 1: Frozen in English only, and it's sang let it go
Speaker 1: when a button on its necklace was pushed, and that
Speaker 1: is fine. Then after two years it became bilingual and
Speaker 1: it started being able to speak Spanish and English and
Speaker 1: sing in both languages, and that that was all that.
Speaker 1: In a way, that's an improvement, So that's great. Uh.
Speaker 1: But okay, by the way, this whole time, the batteries
Speaker 1: in the stall were never changed. And I can speak
Speaker 1: from experience that children's toys without a battery change start
Speaker 1: exhibiting very strange behavior. But this doesn't explain the next thing.
Speaker 1: So no change in batteries. The doll then started speaking
Speaker 1: or singing even when she was turned off. So the
Speaker 1: family went in saying they were like, we need this
Speaker 1: thing out of there. They threw it away. Later, I
Speaker 1: think a couple of weeks later, it appeared in a
Speaker 1: bench in their living room and they were so freaked
Speaker 1: out they double bagged it and put it at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the trash can because they were like, the
Speaker 1: only explanation is that their kids had gone to the
Speaker 1: trash and taken else out and put her in the bench.
Speaker 1: So they put her at the bottom of the trash
Speaker 1: can then put a bunch of trash on top of her.
Speaker 1: At that point, she appeared outside their house and their
Speaker 1: daughter was like, I found Elsa. She came. So they
Speaker 1: lost their mind and they've been posting about this on
Speaker 1: social media and eventually they had to send the doll
Speaker 1: to a family friend in Minnesota who had agreed to
Speaker 1: take her in, and he was like, if she starts
Speaker 1: acting scary and demonic, I'm gonna I'm gonna weld her
Speaker 1: to a metal pipe and bury her in the woods.
Speaker 1: And now that's where we are at present day. She's
Speaker 1: duct taped to their car. Great, because I feel like
Speaker 1: we're really getting back to our haunted doll roots. Yet exactly,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is some original night called doll magic.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. I mean it speak. The speaking in
Speaker 1: Spanish just feels like they have like one ship that
Speaker 1: they make for the doll, and it has the Spanish
Speaker 1: language version on it too, and it's just a matter
Speaker 1: of what it was. Two years later, there were two
Speaker 1: years there was like an Adbusters thing where people would
Speaker 1: swap the chips from g I Joe's and talking Barbie
Speaker 1: because Barbie said things like I hate math, and so
Speaker 1: there were people who were like swap them, would say that.
Speaker 1: Barbie would be like, let's go Joe, Let's go to war.
Speaker 1: This doll feels like it a sentient yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and the moving of the doll like so when you
Speaker 1: look at the doll too, it's not a particularly animated doll. Like,
Speaker 1: it's not a it's not a high tech doll. It's
Speaker 1: got a big head, it's got it's one of the
Speaker 1: huge it's like has a kind of brats vibe to it.
Speaker 1: So it it's not a walking doll. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: all seen the dolls where it's feet. It's conceivable they
Speaker 1: might walk. I guess this doll was definitely like flew
Speaker 1: through the air powered by spirits. There's no question she
Speaker 1: did not move by any physical means that we can understand. Right,
Speaker 1: hang on, oh that's her speaking in Spanish. Test your
Speaker 1: kids have any talking dolls that scare you. Yes, okay, well,
Speaker 1: so yes, we have Louvera Vella, who is a very
Speaker 1: i wouldn't say very realistic, but definitely like approaching Uncanny Valley. Um.
Speaker 1: She is a newborn baby that kind of like she's
Speaker 1: always kind of sleepy, but she does cry and giggle
Speaker 1: and my daughter really enjoys her. But then also my
Speaker 1: daughter wanted a baby live. Oh I'm so scared of
Speaker 1: baby alive. Well, this baby Alive is the world's most
Speaker 1: basic and archaic baby. That's the scary one where it
Speaker 1: slurps the cherries up. This is the one that's even
Speaker 1: more basic than that, where it's a doll, hollow doll
Speaker 1: with a tube that goes from mouth to butt, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't it's not animated at all. It has no
Speaker 1: batteries or anything that's like the original, like the of
Speaker 1: a baby doll. Okay, I had the baby alive that
Speaker 1: chewed the cherries and and it seemed to take a
Speaker 1: long time for her to digest, which is very exciting.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of suspense. This one, it's just like
Speaker 1: my daughter had. You know, she comes with a little
Speaker 1: toilet and she would just sit her on the toilet
Speaker 1: and forced feed her. All this pair just come right out.
Speaker 1: She'd be like, look, she's being again, She's being again,
Speaker 1: she's through see again. This has to stop. But we
Speaker 1: had some battery operated things, uh, and in particular like
Speaker 1: this puzzle that had light sensors and little animals on
Speaker 1: it where when you remove the animal, it made the
Speaker 1: animal noise. But for some reason, the pieces weren't flush,
Speaker 1: like I guess it had been used too much, so
Speaker 1: they were kind of loose. So we stored it in
Speaker 1: the basement and for a long time, like I couldn't
Speaker 1: figure out what was happening because every so often the
Speaker 1: light would shift in there, I guess, and you'd hear
Speaker 1: like I was like, what is down there? And it
Speaker 1: was the cursed puzzle. But they get glitchy when their
Speaker 1: batteries go, the battery operated ones. So we also had
Speaker 1: a horrible walker type of thing where it would be
Speaker 1: like ring alang, the animals sang, and she would just
Speaker 1: go anytime a day turned off, for sure, Wow, let's
Speaker 1: talk about something else really scary, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: speaking of things becoming more and more sentient, Yeah, by degrees,
Speaker 1: we watched the lawnmower Man for our unnerving c g
Speaker 1: I January series following Cats and the Abyss. I unfortunately
Speaker 1: was not able to watch it. So I'm just going
Speaker 1: to ask you, guys questions about lawnmower Man. I've been
Speaker 1: wanting to see this movie forever. It's a great movie
Speaker 1: to ask questions about. So I Well, the one thing
Speaker 1: I know about lawnmower Man is is it as one
Speaker 1: of the like, um, one of the great examples of
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties adaptations of things that have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the source material. Yes, have you guys read
Speaker 1: the story. I haven't read it, but we both read
Speaker 1: the synopsis. Have you read it? Mom, I know what
Speaker 1: the story is about, which is incredible. Well, let's just
Speaker 1: say so lawnmower Man came out in this was originally
Speaker 1: they were going to market it as Stephen King's The
Speaker 1: lawnmower Man, but King was like, I will sue you
Speaker 1: into oblivion. Um. The plot of Stephen King's seventy five
Speaker 1: short story The lawnmower Man is about out this guy
Speaker 1: who runs like a gardening center and he or I
Speaker 1: guess like, he hires a serviceman who the reading. It's
Speaker 1: just like, okay, he arrives with a lawnmower that mows
Speaker 1: the lawn by itself, and then the gardener guy crawls
Speaker 1: around naked behind the mower eating grass. Oh, I thought
Speaker 1: it was that he ate the grass and that's how
Speaker 1: he mowed like he was the lawnmower. I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of both. It's both somehow, I think he's eating
Speaker 1: the moon. I have to read like the stuff that's
Speaker 1: left behind, like they don't bag it. Maybe it's going
Speaker 1: really fast because machine and human are working as one.
Speaker 1: Um the serviceman himself is actually a sadder. Is that
Speaker 1: how you pronounce it? Like a sad sader? Is a
Speaker 1: sader or a sadder? Okay, yeah, I think it's a
Speaker 1: sad pan Pan the goat god pan Ya one half
Speaker 1: goat and the other half man Um when part get
Speaker 1: so when like the Parkcats the guy who owns the
Speaker 1: landscaping service, when Parkat tries to call the police, the
Speaker 1: mower and its owner ritually kill him as a sacrifice
Speaker 1: to Pan. Then you have the lawnmower movie, so which
Speaker 1: has none of this. Studio that made the lamb arm
Speaker 1: and the movie owned the rights to the title The
Speaker 1: lawnmower Man and rather than adapt the story. I assume
Speaker 1: they also owned the rights to the story. But it's
Speaker 1: not maybe enough to fill out a whole movie. Well,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's just a what if a lawnmower
Speaker 1: was a man? That's not an exactly a three, I
Speaker 1: mean a little bit what the lawnmower Man is also about.
Speaker 1: The Lammer Man is based on the script originally called
Speaker 1: Cyber God, and it uses a lot of Stephen King tropes. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's about a scientist played by Pierce Brosnan wearing hoop earrings. Earrings, yeah,
Speaker 1: he um is doing experiments, cutting edge experiments that are
Speaker 1: about cyberspace and about like hooking a human brain up
Speaker 1: to well, first a monkey brain. He's Dr Laurence Angelo.
Speaker 1: I have to say this is this is an amazing
Speaker 1: performance by Pierce Brosn and in that I cannot decide
Speaker 1: if it's good or bad, or if he's laughing at
Speaker 1: himself or taking himself completely serious. But he's good because
Speaker 1: everyone's taking it seriously. Like it is a little campy,
Speaker 1: because it's like it's a lot camp it's a fake
Speaker 1: Stephen King, but it's also like legitimately kind of scary
Speaker 1: in parts. No, you didn't think so. I mean it's disturbing,
Speaker 1: it's a very problematic, it's and dated, it's unving. So
Speaker 1: have you guys ever read Flowers for Algernon? Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: it's Flowers for Algernon, but with the Internet. So it's
Speaker 1: like a guy who is developed mentally disabled, who people
Speaker 1: hire to mow lawns, who is kept by an evil
Speaker 1: priest in a little shed. Sure, and the priest trigger warning,
Speaker 1: the priest has molested this man from the time that
Speaker 1: he received him when he was five years old, which
Speaker 1: we only learned later in the movie. So that's a
Speaker 1: trigger warning and a spoiler alert all rolled into one. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, a lot of the people in the community
Speaker 1: are very nice to this man. Um played by Jeff
Speaker 1: Ay and his character's name is Job Smith, which seems unsubtle,
Speaker 1: to say the least. Subt It has some carry vibes
Speaker 1: at times. UM in terms of the evil priest kind
Speaker 1: of trying to keep Job in a childlike and submissive state.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of like Stephen King Greatest Hits tropes
Speaker 1: um blended together. What did the priest have to do
Speaker 1: with anything? It's just that he's this He's like a
Speaker 1: guy in a terrible situation who nobody cares about, even
Speaker 1: the person who's supposed to care about him, which is
Speaker 1: why he's the perfect human subject for Pierce Brosnan, who's
Speaker 1: been looking for a human to jack into the proto matrix.
Speaker 1: And the way that they originally cross paths is that
Speaker 1: the monkey cyborg is that his name again, cry Oborg
Speaker 1: something like that he has somehow gone into escaped and
Speaker 1: he's entered into Job's shack. So Pierce Brosen and the
Speaker 1: other scientists show up to get the monkey back, and
Speaker 1: then they end up like shooting the monkey because the
Speaker 1: monkey becomes super violent. It's wearing a helmet. Also, the
Speaker 1: monkey becomes smarter and smarter and becomes like more smarter
Speaker 1: than any human and then becomes like unstoppably violent, like
Speaker 1: tearing people's heads off. Well, because what we discover later
Speaker 1: is that Pierce Brosen is kind of under the impression
Speaker 1: that they are trying to find ways to like cure
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's patients or help intellectually disabled people become like, you know,
Speaker 1: really really super smart. And then the people above Pierce
Speaker 1: Brosnan who are funding his research is the breaking bad
Speaker 1: guys one of them. Yeah, play the brother. They're like, no,
Speaker 1: the best use of this technology is to get people
Speaker 1: to become killing machines so we can send them to war.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened to the monkey. Very Stephen King.
Speaker 1: We're making super soldiers. That's what we really Stephen King
Speaker 1: would have done it so much better, needless to say, So,
Speaker 1: what's being jacked into what? At this point, the monkey
Speaker 1: is being jacked into the human brain or no, No,
Speaker 1: there's never a monkey human crossover. The monkey was the
Speaker 1: first test subject. When they kill the monkey, Pierce bros
Speaker 1: And is like, I've worked so hard on that monkey.
Speaker 1: And then he's kind of like, huh, what's your deal job, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're in a bad situation. Sure, hooked up to a computer.
Speaker 1: It's just like he's jacked into the web. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: But when they're jacked into the web, you see representations
Speaker 1: of what that looks and feels like. And they're in
Speaker 1: those things, those like spinning around things that are in
Speaker 1: a lot of sid Have you ever been in one
Speaker 1: of those? I have? I have in Seattle? Did you adult? Yes?
Speaker 1: It was like a lifelong goal of mine to go
Speaker 1: into that, like my entire childhood, and then when I
Speaker 1: finally did, I was like, what else can I do
Speaker 1: in life? Is the best thing? I was very nauseous.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's super Yeah. Um yeah. Not only does this
Speaker 1: make you dizzy, it also plunges you into late eighties
Speaker 1: early nineties c g I landscape. It looks like Miami
Speaker 1: Vice kind of. I mean it just has the like
Speaker 1: Pasteli kind of neon over the grid that's dark and
Speaker 1: you're like flying through. Yeah. It's great because it is
Speaker 1: sort of like those early computer animation things where it's
Speaker 1: just truly trying to be a psychedelic as humanly possible,
Speaker 1: not trying to portray anything realistically, just like yeah, what
Speaker 1: if you could put a computer on drugs? What would
Speaker 1: it see? Yeah? Yeah, Well it's like really taking advantage
Speaker 1: of this new texture that it was like the way
Speaker 1: that computer animation looks, and just making that its own thing,
Speaker 1: as opposed to trying to make it imitate reality, which
Speaker 1: is now all the game is is like just make
Speaker 1: everything as realistic as possible through c g I, instead
Speaker 1: of like, look at this new aesthetic we have, isn't
Speaker 1: that way all I've seen? It's weird. It's really weird.
Speaker 1: It's very like Alex Gray, like a X ray of
Speaker 1: a person, the kind of art that people are like.
Speaker 1: This is what it feels like to be on d
Speaker 1: M T. Right. Speaking of that, the most intense scene
Speaker 1: in this movie, I think, and I'm wondering if you agree,
Speaker 1: is the virtual reality sex scene. Yeah, the virtual reality
Speaker 1: sex scene is. Um. So fast forward to Job getting
Speaker 1: super smart by watching videos at hyper speed, so he's
Speaker 1: all caught up on smarts. He's also taking like potions
Speaker 1: to give him telekinetic tropics. They call it new tropis. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is great. Um, but also you don't know what
Speaker 1: these new tropics do. They might make you smarter than
Speaker 1: anyone's ever been. Well, he starts getting headaches because he
Speaker 1: can read people's minds and he's telling he has to
Speaker 1: like kinesis. So that's when the lawn mower starts mowing
Speaker 1: the lawn by itself. But he's also just like he's brooding.
Speaker 1: Now he's a cyber god. He surpasses humans. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: then so he gets also hot during this. He gets
Speaker 1: super hot, but he still kind of looks like confused,
Speaker 1: like Jeff Daniels and dumb and dumber. Yeah, but like,
Speaker 1: you know, I wouldn't. He looks like he's supposed to
Speaker 1: be amish and whatever. He's hot. Let's let's be real.
Speaker 1: He gets hot, gets hot positive a second, because I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, new tropic, Like I don't feel like
Speaker 1: that was a word that was like that feels like
Speaker 1: a very early use of that word. And I'm wondering
Speaker 1: now because I'm looking at the history of new tropics.
Speaker 1: It was coined in nineteen seventy two, okay, but like
Speaker 1: it didn't start being like until the two thousands, didn't
Speaker 1: really start being used in products and stuff. I think
Speaker 1: it was more theoretical at that point. Probably at that
Speaker 1: point they were like, there's this scary, horrible thing. Don't
Speaker 1: do it. I'm not going to use the tropics. Don't
Speaker 1: do it. And then forty years later it was like,
Speaker 1: let's market this to people. Well the movies about like
Speaker 1: here's why it would be bad to be a cyber god,
Speaker 1: and then people were like, okay, but I still want them.
Speaker 1: But wait. The scariest scene is when he has this
Speaker 1: he has sex, virtual reality sex with this woman because
Speaker 1: he's now hot and he becomes a He's like, I've
Speaker 1: seen your fantasy and She's like, oh how, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I read your mind, and then he turns into this
Speaker 1: super grotesque like beast, looking like half machine half beast,
Speaker 1: with like a weird tunnel mouth, and he basically eats
Speaker 1: her in the virtual this I'm looking at like Dr
Speaker 1: Manhattan like sex, but then it evolves. They're all covered
Speaker 1: in like web mucas type. It's so Crazy've seen the
Speaker 1: Aerosmith video for Amazing, Yeah, it's exactly that. It's like
Speaker 1: two Dr Manhattan's flying towards each other in space, and
Speaker 1: then they combine into that too, and they fly with tentacles.
Speaker 1: Then they once they combine, it's like again they surpass
Speaker 1: like human sex and turn into a dragonfly. And then
Speaker 1: she starts getting freaked out and she's like I don't
Speaker 1: know what the fund is happening, Like let me out
Speaker 1: of this thing, and he's like no, he know. Well
Speaker 1: he was like, he was like I know what you want,
Speaker 1: and he turns himself into this horrible thing and she's
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, and then he can't stop it.
Speaker 1: Whether he's really scary, it's super scary. And then he
Speaker 1: like when he eats her, she it breaks her brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she she can't function afterwards, She's just she just laughs.
Speaker 1: She lies on a bed, laughing all the time. So
Speaker 1: she So they were both in like a virtual space together.
Speaker 1: They were both jacked into the same virtual space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was like her, her puny human brain couldn't
Speaker 1: handle it and it broke her. And then he starts
Speaker 1: becoming violent and going out and seeking revenge on all
Speaker 1: the people who were assholes to him when insults. Okay, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: I have the same thought, because I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's in real life he has this persona then in
Speaker 1: the virtual because he has It's true that in the original,
Speaker 1: like in the in the beginning of his virtual journey,
Speaker 1: he's like, I have all this power, I'm super powerful,
Speaker 1: but in real life he's still pretty tame. And then
Speaker 1: gradually the too kind of converge and he's taking revenge
Speaker 1: on all of these people as this like hyper powerful
Speaker 1: thing that was basically fabricated from his experiences online. Um,
Speaker 1: I want to say it a movie you really can't forget.
Speaker 1: I just remember being scared of the poster for this movie,
Speaker 1: and I didn't see it till now because that poster
Speaker 1: made such an impression on me. This is pretty early Internet,
Speaker 1: at least for like the lay person, Like I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, email and maybe just started to become a thing.
Speaker 1: Does it feel like handering and cautionary about the Internet
Speaker 1: in the way that like say, the net does or
Speaker 1: does it not even there yet? Is it not even
Speaker 1: thinking about? It feels handering about being able to shoot
Speaker 1: things out of your brain? It's like carry It is
Speaker 1: just like Carrie, It's like Harry because it's I think
Speaker 1: it's the idea of and and like with flowers for Algernon,
Speaker 1: that you can have this man made improvement to your
Speaker 1: life and it's scientific, but there's gonna be a downside.
Speaker 1: What will the downside be? And and not knowing that,
Speaker 1: are you willing to take the risk? And in this case,
Speaker 1: he couldn't really make the decision on his own, it
Speaker 1: was made for him. You end up feeling like the
Speaker 1: doctor is also sort of sympathetic character because he didn't
Speaker 1: know that this was it was going to be given
Speaker 1: the things that make him vine. It starts out you're
Speaker 1: just like he's evil because he's like using these people
Speaker 1: just because he has to see what happens with the experiments,
Speaker 1: and then by the end they're like, you know, he's
Speaker 1: upon for the military industrial complex who are using his curiosity.
Speaker 1: He feels really bad about what he's done too. It's
Speaker 1: like what I'm saying, like everybody just started using the
Speaker 1: Internet out of curiosity and and uh, jen you in
Speaker 1: the good natured human instinct. Yeah, I mean this does that?
Speaker 1: Does it captures that feeling. Test made a really good
Speaker 1: meme where it was like me on Twitter or it's
Speaker 1: just like I love to get out here, and it
Speaker 1: does capture that kind of like sticky feeling of like
Speaker 1: time makes no sense in this space. Well, I actually
Speaker 1: thought that the thing that was most analogous to the
Speaker 1: Internet was when he was learning, like when he had
Speaker 1: been given he had been trained with a virtual reality
Speaker 1: game that was basically like a like fighter jet kind
Speaker 1: of game, and he did it with this neighborhood kid
Speaker 1: and nothing nefarious there, even though the way I said
Speaker 1: it makes it sound that way. But they were both
Speaker 1: like kind of lying on these platforms and like battling
Speaker 1: each other. And then eventually Job got better than the kid,
Speaker 1: which was meant to show us that he was ready
Speaker 1: to move on to the next stage. So the next
Speaker 1: stage was him watching things at a super fast speed,
Speaker 1: and he was able to retain all of it. And
Speaker 1: then eventually it got to the point where he's in
Speaker 1: the car driving around with the kid and they're listening
Speaker 1: to music and he'll pop a CD in in and
Speaker 1: it'll play for like ten seconds, then he pops it
Speaker 1: out and the kids like, don't you want to just
Speaker 1: listen to the whole track? And he was like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't. And I was like, Oh, it's about how
Speaker 1: when you're getting so much information, almost like you're training yourself,
Speaker 1: like be smarter, no more, and then everything loses its meaning,
Speaker 1: everything loses the ability to drive pleasure from it. Everything
Speaker 1: just tastes like information ruin your your attention span forever.
Speaker 1: You do have to be mindful about how much you
Speaker 1: use the Internet, because it's easy to use it all
Speaker 1: of the time mindlessly and to be like but there
Speaker 1: are downsides to that, especially for your mental health. I
Speaker 1: feel like I just give the clerk speech about cigarettes
Speaker 1: all the time, but about like Twitter, just like you're paying.
Speaker 1: I mean you're not paying, but you are paying. You're paying.
Speaker 1: You're doing something that's harming your mental health because it's
Speaker 1: so addictive. Just a decade into it to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: it's addictive and bad and has a downside, and it's
Speaker 1: not just fun and like talking to friends in another plane.
Speaker 1: It also also not like a necessary utility the way
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people take it for
Speaker 1: granted that it must be like I can't do without
Speaker 1: this because it's just like a part of my life.
Speaker 1: I can't not have a prime account because I have
Speaker 1: to buy toilet papers and flowers for Algernon. It's really
Speaker 1: sad um. I just read a lot about Flowers for Algernon,
Speaker 1: which I didn't realize had been published originally as like
Speaker 1: sci fi, even though it is sci fi. And the
Speaker 1: Charlie did you ever see Charlie? Yeah, just this idea
Speaker 1: that like when you you know, when you mess with
Speaker 1: nature in a way that it doesn't ask for, you're
Speaker 1: going to get the horns, but he finds a way.
Speaker 1: But also the end of Charlie and Followers for Algernon,
Speaker 1: where you go back to normal, feels like actually like
Speaker 1: wish fulfillment compared to now, well this felt well, But
Speaker 1: in flowers are alternon too. It's like the mouse dive,
Speaker 1: so you don't know if he's going to die too.
Speaker 1: It's like you fly too high. But really this is
Speaker 1: a warning against the dangers of telekinesis. It is telegenesis
Speaker 1: is no good. Also, we promised when we get telekinetic powers,
Speaker 1: we're all going to use them responsible. Oh for sure,
Speaker 1: telekinetic tellings. There's no verb for it. Really, Yeah, tele
Speaker 1: like a night call. Um. We did, by the way,
Speaker 1: get a tip about The lawnmower Man. I forget who
Speaker 1: sent this in. Let me look, um, this is Walrus
Speaker 1: Master on Twitter. Please tell me. There was a discussion
Speaker 1: about how The lawnmower Man was considered almost a religious
Speaker 1: text by David Koresh, which it was The Washington Post
Speaker 1: Archives has something from and I quote David Koresh liked
Speaker 1: The lawnmower Man so much that he showed the film
Speaker 1: to his branch Davidian followers as an analogy to his
Speaker 1: own spiritual ascendency. That makes a lot of sense. You
Speaker 1: can see how this movie would make a strong positive
Speaker 1: impact on someone who was very disturbed. I mean that's
Speaker 1: part of the scary I I now admit, after talking
Speaker 1: about the scary virtual reality set scene, that there are
Speaker 1: very terrifying moments. Yeah, and I think what we were
Speaker 1: saying about using c g I for sort of an
Speaker 1: artistic purpose in the context of an otherwise live action
Speaker 1: movie is really effective and people should do it more,
Speaker 1: using it as a tool instead of just sort of
Speaker 1: like to create sound stages. More ugly c g I more.
Speaker 1: I mean it's not even ugly. That was the thing.
Speaker 1: I was like, I think I used to think this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff was ugly because it scared me, But
Speaker 1: now I was like, it's actually really cool. Well, it's
Speaker 1: like more, I guess unoptimized c g I. Like all
Speaker 1: c g I is used as like a technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a technology instead of a medium. Like that's
Speaker 1: solely how it's being used Now. I feel like, excepting cats,
Speaker 1: always want to see cats. Also, we're back do this podcast.
Speaker 1: Emily will have a take on cats. Everybody else in
Speaker 1: the universe who's going to see cats will have seen
Speaker 1: cats at that point. So welcome back tonight called podcast
Speaker 1: for you Strange Days, Lonely Nights. We have a very
Speaker 1: special guest today, Emma Cunningham. Welcome Emma. Emma is a
Speaker 1: human who does stuff with magic and computers and fermentation,
Speaker 1: and she's also an expert in cybersecurity. If you've been
Speaker 1: in any of our live shows here in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: you would have been treated to some of her magical talents. Yeah, Emma.
Speaker 1: Emma is a great magician and also has a lot
Speaker 1: of really interesting thoughts about tunefoil hats and why we
Speaker 1: should all be wearing them. That's that's it. That's the thought.
Speaker 1: We should all be living in one big tinfoil hat.
Speaker 1: Please tell me more. You mean, like, like, you know,
Speaker 1: there are like those places where you can go to
Speaker 1: be uh what's it called. It's like it's like the
Speaker 1: detox for technology. It was right, It's like safe. It's
Speaker 1: like the Todd Haynes movie. Um. Yeah, but that's like
Speaker 1: a concerts too, and like live shows sometimes where it's
Speaker 1: like you have to like put your phone in a
Speaker 1: bag so it won't transmit signal because it's like you
Speaker 1: have to be present. That's concerts though. That's I've heard
Speaker 1: done for some concerts, Like I can't remember which ones,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I've heard it's more like fancy things, you know,
Speaker 1: high end. I've heard of this also, like high end
Speaker 1: sex parties put your phone in the tinfoil bag. So
Speaker 1: you were just telling us that putting your phone in
Speaker 1: a tinfoil bag would perhaps actually stop the signals. Is
Speaker 1: that perhaps true or no? Perhaps I'm more familiar with
Speaker 1: they're called fair day cages or fair day bags. I'm
Speaker 1: actually not sure about the tinfoil thing. That's news to me.
Speaker 1: And if that works, we should all do it. And
Speaker 1: I was telling him that I put my key fob
Speaker 1: for my car in this little bag, but I heard
Speaker 1: that he could put it in your freezer or in
Speaker 1: a metal box or even just surrounded with tinfoil and
Speaker 1: it basically renders your key like only it only works
Speaker 1: inside the enclosure. So if for a while people were
Speaker 1: able to hack key fobs, so they could they have
Speaker 1: like a universal key fob and they could unlock your car.
Speaker 1: And someone unlocked my car and I was like, this sucks.
Speaker 1: What am I going to do? And my dad was like, well,
Speaker 1: there's like a fifty cent bag that you can buy,
Speaker 1: and then I got it and I don't use it,
Speaker 1: but I could. So they would hack it, but they
Speaker 1: would have to be in proximity to your key fop
Speaker 1: and then they could cop Is that how it would happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they basically steal the signal. I have no idea technologically
Speaker 1: how it works. But it is a way of you
Speaker 1: go like, yeah, if you're in close proximity, you use
Speaker 1: this thing and it can hack your key fop and
Speaker 1: somebody can just be passing by you on the street
Speaker 1: and get your car virtually steal your car keys. So
Speaker 1: the net as technology becomes the net um becomes a
Speaker 1: scary net that takes over everyone's lives. If is like,
Speaker 1: there have to be some ways to fight back, such
Speaker 1: as Faraday bags. Um, we were going to talk about
Speaker 1: the creepy mind reading tools SCAN used by police across
Speaker 1: the country. Okay, I'm obsessed with this. Um. It was
Speaker 1: a very very dense report, So the summary is basically
Speaker 1: so last month in December, pro public A published or
Speaker 1: report titled why are cops around the world using this
Speaker 1: outlandish mind reading tool? And I was like, I will
Speaker 1: read this. It will take a long time, but I
Speaker 1: will do it. It's extremely scary. There's a tool called SCAN,
Speaker 1: which stands for Scientific Content Analysis that claims without proved
Speaker 1: to be able to detect wise and written accounts from
Speaker 1: criminal suspects. So basically it was invented by this guy
Speaker 1: sapp here. He's the creator of SCAN, and he says
Speaker 1: I am pleased to say scan has helped solve thousands
Speaker 1: of cases over the years. It has no scientific basis.
Speaker 1: You too, Tiga suspect. You sit them down, you give
Speaker 1: them a you know, pizza paper, a pen, and you
Speaker 1: just say, write a first person account of the night
Speaker 1: in question. So they'll start writing. And then there are
Speaker 1: these color coded ways that you kind of categorize the
Speaker 1: information that they use. So, for instance, it can be
Speaker 1: if you use the word um, if you say I
Speaker 1: was with my children and I went out and I
Speaker 1: left the kids, They're like, hold on, you said children,
Speaker 1: then you said kids, lying, You're lying. Yeah, So um.
Speaker 1: It's a really cheap, obviously way of analyzing quote unquote
Speaker 1: what someone is saying and trying to kind of get
Speaker 1: into their brain. It completely doesn't work, and it's used
Speaker 1: by the FBI, CIA, and I think the US Armed Forces.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of like a really cheap, like minority
Speaker 1: report want to be type predictive law enforcement technology. What
Speaker 1: have you seen about sort of people's selling tech that
Speaker 1: claims to do things it can't do well? The proof
Speaker 1: I love claims with that process is great and just
Speaker 1: gonna like burst under rooms and be like, well, I
Speaker 1: claim without proof. Well, I mean it's interesting because like
Speaker 1: a lot of the language analysis stuff is based very
Speaker 1: much on like claims without proof. But even even things
Speaker 1: like DNA testing, right that, like we put so much
Speaker 1: stock and there's still it's not this like you know
Speaker 1: thing where you're like, oh, yeah, if we got a match,
Speaker 1: then we know what a ercent certainty. There are actually
Speaker 1: all these cases where actually DNA testing is in fact,
Speaker 1: you know, led to the wrong person being apprehended and
Speaker 1: things like that. Um, yeah, it's interesting that this is
Speaker 1: like this low fide, not even quite techy way of
Speaker 1: sort of promoting a solution that's not really verified based
Speaker 1: on anything. It also says indications of truthfulness include use
Speaker 1: of the past tense, first person singular quote I went
Speaker 1: to the store, pronouns such as my, which signal commitment,
Speaker 1: and direct denials the best being I did not do it.
Speaker 1: Signs of deception include lack of memory, spontaneous corrections, and
Speaker 1: swapping one word for another like the kids and children
Speaker 1: um Sapierre has used this tool to analyze testimonies from
Speaker 1: Komy and Muller. Comy's testimony includes a lot of him
Speaker 1: describing opening and closing doors, like I came home, I
Speaker 1: opened the door, I opened my garage door, and Sapierre says, oh,
Speaker 1: he was the victim of childhood trauma. So they contacted
Speaker 1: Comy for this article and he was like, Wow, that
Speaker 1: is such a load of bullshit. I wish that you
Speaker 1: could get your money back from ordering this book about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one is scary because it's so dumb. But the
Speaker 1: ones that are really scary are the facial database recognition ones.
Speaker 1: And you tweet a lot about what is so bad
Speaker 1: about those, uh, specifically that they're very racist. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: incredibly racist. Shocking, Um, I mean the application of these
Speaker 1: algorithms as racist, and then also the actual algorithms themselves
Speaker 1: are racists and so on. Faces for people of color,
Speaker 1: they're wildly inaccurate. But again, similar to the scan stuff,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, but we used science, and science said
Speaker 1: that this was the person, so we're going to go
Speaker 1: after this person. Yeah, and it's crazy. We've seen so
Speaker 1: much junk science from like the turn of the last century.
Speaker 1: Return the fact that people are talking about phrenology like
Speaker 1: it is a real discipline and not junk science. It
Speaker 1: seems like with some of the tech stuff too. It's
Speaker 1: like if people don't know what is possible, like Sarah knows,
Speaker 1: they're just like, well, that sounds like you should be
Speaker 1: able to do it, So sure, I bet that program
Speaker 1: does what you're telling me. It does the stuff with
Speaker 1: the scan, the whole scan thing. It feels like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's possible to just analyze a statement or analyze some
Speaker 1: text that a person says, and like, you know, you
Speaker 1: can make a lot of observations about that and that
Speaker 1: can be really interesting, like just how people tend to
Speaker 1: construct thoughts like but then to attempt to draw any
Speaker 1: conclusions about that aside from just what's on the page
Speaker 1: feels like Yeah, it's like something like we we were
Speaker 1: able to, like at least from a programming standpoint or something, uh,
Speaker 1: be able to analyze this information in a way that's
Speaker 1: sort of interesting, but then like to take it to
Speaker 1: the like magic realm after that and there are hidden
Speaker 1: truths that you can unlock through. This feels like something
Speaker 1: that is easily like I don't know, like people who
Speaker 1: are stupid and or cops are probably easily taken in
Speaker 1: by this kind That's interesting because the last thing I
Speaker 1: pulled from the pro public thing is Um, they got
Speaker 1: a quote from this guy named Stephen Drizzen who's in
Speaker 1: Northwestern University law professor who specializes in wrongful convictions, and
Speaker 1: he's just said big claims me without scientific grounding are
Speaker 1: suffering from overclaim syndrome, which is, you know, when they
Speaker 1: asked him why police would trust these kind of things,
Speaker 1: he said, A lot has to do with hubris, a
Speaker 1: belief on the part of police officers that they can
Speaker 1: tell when someone is lying to them with a high
Speaker 1: degree of accuracy. These tools play into that belief and
Speaker 1: confirm that belief. I wonder how many cops would I
Speaker 1: self identify as like kind of a mentalist. Right. There
Speaker 1: was a group in l A called Stop l A
Speaker 1: p D Spying that specifically works to kind of combat
Speaker 1: these programs in l A and got some of them
Speaker 1: to not be implemented or to be stopp being implemented
Speaker 1: because they were like identifying literally children as like potential
Speaker 1: gang members and stuff like that. So it's all pretty
Speaker 1: goddamn creepy. Wait, but I have more questions for Emma
Speaker 1: regarding what is the scariest tech to you? Yeah, the scariest, Oh,
Speaker 1: I think the deep fake stuff is pretty fucking terrifying. Um.
Speaker 1: The it's so I saw a demo video of it
Speaker 1: recently of someone who's like, I posted one picture of
Speaker 1: myself that wasn't even great. Lighting wasn't great. Um, and
Speaker 1: then I was able to generate a deep fake of
Speaker 1: like me as Leo's character in Titanic, and it does
Speaker 1: not look computer gener like. If I hadn't seen the
Speaker 1: movie Titanic, I would be like, wow, you were on
Speaker 1: a But and I think, like that stuff is also
Speaker 1: just so terrifying, not not only because you know you
Speaker 1: could use it to make it look like someone did think,
Speaker 1: but it also just like, along with fake news, is
Speaker 1: degrading our like trust in reality. Do you think that
Speaker 1: there's something about the increasing, like at least the films
Speaker 1: that the majority of people see, like Marvel movies and
Speaker 1: things where it's mostly all C G I and composites
Speaker 1: and stuff like that and everything stitched together. Do you
Speaker 1: think that that's like a nerd our eyes to just
Speaker 1: like ignore this sort of thing, like it all looks real,
Speaker 1: attracts and becausen't track is real in a Marvel movie.
Speaker 1: In a Marvel movie, you're like, that's c G I
Speaker 1: in a deep fake. You're like, that's a real photograph
Speaker 1: and that's what's scary. But I hear what Emily is
Speaker 1: saying is that it's not it's not supposed to be
Speaker 1: completely realistic, but it kind of opens the door to
Speaker 1: accepting things that are not perfosing. Cream is at your
Speaker 1: eyeballs is like, that's fake, like because you just see it,
Speaker 1: Like even if your brain is like this is a movie,
Speaker 1: you're still like used to it in a way, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't set off alarm bells
Speaker 1: in your brain. Right. I guess most movies just don't
Speaker 1: use c g I to try and like replicate something
Speaker 1: really boring, right, but I should well, I mean or
Speaker 1: mundane like Zodiac does a really good job of like
Speaker 1: using c g I in a way where you never
Speaker 1: notice there's c g I. So you got to see
Speaker 1: The Irishman most mundane c g I maybe of the years.
Speaker 1: The Irishman like a movie a long deep fake basically,
Speaker 1: I mean now that they can do all of this
Speaker 1: um not only like the aging technology that they use there,
Speaker 1: but then actually like you know, they've scanned full body,
Speaker 1: scanned so many people now, like anybody who's gone through
Speaker 1: the Marvel or Disney world has been full body scanned
Speaker 1: and basically given their likeness over to me, Emma, what
Speaker 1: can we do to combat the reep of tech and surveillance? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I think one thing is that we can just I mean,
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of work to do it in
Speaker 1: some ways, but just think about what we're opting into,
Speaker 1: right And because I think the other thing that I
Speaker 1: think is scary along with deep fix is what helped
Speaker 1: enabled deep fix to begin with, which is like all
Speaker 1: of that data that it took to be able to
Speaker 1: be able to create the models that allows allows you
Speaker 1: to generate a video, right, and that comes from you know,
Speaker 1: every time we send a selfie and post it on
Speaker 1: Instagram or um ring. I think is also really problematic.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that's scary is we've also started
Speaker 1: to be sold all of these consumer products and experiences
Speaker 1: that are the underlying like intention is to harvest as
Speaker 1: much data as possible, but like we've been tricked into
Speaker 1: not seeing that part. I have a question to you,
Speaker 1: what related to this? Am I crazy when I um
Speaker 1: yell at my friend because she is going to in
Speaker 1: up for Google Fi? No, You're not crazy? At all
Speaker 1: that that seems like a really bad ideas. I don't
Speaker 1: know what this is either. Oh, it's it's it's Google's
Speaker 1: uh cell service and internet service. So do you think
Speaker 1: we can get off of technology completely before it ruins
Speaker 1: there was left of the world. Yeah. I mean it's
Speaker 1: interesting because in the past year I've been trying to
Speaker 1: do that in as many ways as I could. I
Speaker 1: was just telling tests before this that I, as a
Speaker 1: person that loves consuming pop culture and all kinds of media,
Speaker 1: in the past years, like tried to opt out of
Speaker 1: as much streaming as possible, as much social media, just
Speaker 1: as an exercise to do it, and it I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that was so terrifying to me
Speaker 1: is I was like, what will I do with all
Speaker 1: of my time in the silence? How will I listen
Speaker 1: to music? And the other day I was like, I
Speaker 1: was listening to an analog radio set pumping through analog
Speaker 1: speakers of my room. Bate was like, where is the
Speaker 1: sound coming from? I was like, and FM frequency? It
Speaker 1: was kind it is. It was like nice to you know,
Speaker 1: have someone else like here in an experience and hear
Speaker 1: the news. So I think like part of it is
Speaker 1: just like also taking stuff and being like, well, do
Speaker 1: we need all of these things at the rates that
Speaker 1: they're coming at us? And I think one thing that
Speaker 1: like if it if something feels like it's really cheap
Speaker 1: or free for the service that's providing you, likely what's
Speaker 1: happening is that it's they're not making money off of
Speaker 1: what you're paying them. They're making money off of your data.
Speaker 1: Who you are, You're the product. Yeah, I have an
Speaker 1: inverse question for you, m as somebody who knows a
Speaker 1: lot more about this stuff than we do. I think
Speaker 1: I assume, uh, I think it's like very like I
Speaker 1: think the instinct a lots just to be like cut
Speaker 1: out all the tech, rip it out of your body,
Speaker 1: like put on your fair day hat and completely opt
Speaker 1: out of all things. But like for you, and I
Speaker 1: know it's like different for everybody, So I wouldn't ask
Speaker 1: you to say something prescriptive for anybody else, but for you, Like,
Speaker 1: what do you think is like good positive things that
Speaker 1: you have about like that we are able to take
Speaker 1: advantage of and technology with technology, and like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think that's the thing that's hard about opting
Speaker 1: out also, right, because technology has enabled a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that has been great, and you know, I had
Speaker 1: knopped out of everything. I'm still on Twitter, and I
Speaker 1: sometimes I'm like, maybe I shouldn't be. But then sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I learned a thing from a person
Speaker 1: like halfway across the world that I don't know how
Speaker 1: I would have come across. Also, you where I find
Speaker 1: out all this news about the dvances and surveillance tech
Speaker 1: and the people fighting back against it. Um, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you know. The thing that I've sort of
Speaker 1: come back to is that sort of a lot of
Speaker 1: these technologies, I see why we gave up all our
Speaker 1: data because we were like, oh, the promise of connection,
Speaker 1: the promise of communication, the promise of sharing art and
Speaker 1: ideas was like so alluring that we just were like,
Speaker 1: whatever it takes, well, we we want to get in.
Speaker 1: And I think to your point, I do think it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think we should be like those goals were bad.
Speaker 1: Those goals were good, and we can still strive towards them.
Speaker 1: It's just there's a way to do it without giving
Speaker 1: all our data to like the YouTube people or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: And I am increasingly interested in sort of uh, this
Speaker 1: idea of like platform cooperative ism, where UM the idea
Speaker 1: is that rather than having you know, a platform, a
Speaker 1: social or software platform be engineered by a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who understand tech but making decisions for people who don't,
Speaker 1: that there's more cooperation between the users, the people who
Speaker 1: are performing the core labor that is generating value for
Speaker 1: the platform UM, and that it's like less about extracting
Speaker 1: value and more about building something that's sustainable and that
Speaker 1: actually like serves the goals that it states. It's trying
Speaker 1: to co op inter yet whichause I think like how
Speaker 1: it felt when, you know, at least for people of
Speaker 1: our generation when we started using the internet, was that
Speaker 1: it was like kind of all exactly, it's like like
Speaker 1: a directional like everybody was just instead of like having
Speaker 1: one tube everybody every reason that kind of what the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia Social Network is attempting. It feels it feels like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it always feels like such a ghost town though when
Speaker 1: it is beginning, because you already have these huge established
Speaker 1: networks and then you want to leave, but then you're
Speaker 1: all by yourself. We should all leave, though I do
Speaker 1: know I would also like there to be new social
Speaker 1: media platforms made by people that aren't bad. You know,
Speaker 1: like I would like to post photos in a place
Speaker 1: where it doesn't remind me that it's owned by Facebook
Speaker 1: every time I open it. Now, that's going to make
Speaker 1: it a lot easier to quit Instagram. I think that
Speaker 1: they added Instagram by Facebook and they did you open it? Yeah? Updated? Um,
Speaker 1: speaking of Instagram, do you think those Instagram filters where
Speaker 1: it puts a thing above your head and tells you
Speaker 1: which one you are are a psi op? Oh? Yeah, absolutely?
Speaker 1: Those are just to map your face like a reaction space. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not really what they're doing. I mean so I
Speaker 1: think with a lot of this stuff, it's like whether
Speaker 1: or not they intend to do it today, like it
Speaker 1: actually maybe doesn't matter because if they're not trying to
Speaker 1: do it now, they still have the data so that
Speaker 1: they could use it for those reasons, right. Um. And
Speaker 1: in some cases there it's not intentional and in other
Speaker 1: cases it's Cambridge Analytica. So and I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: like one of those places where I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know how much intent madters. I think there's it? Do
Speaker 1: think they're I mean, there's a lot of tech that
Speaker 1: like it's just made by people who aren't thinking about it.
Speaker 1: That I mean because working is hard in general, and
Speaker 1: like when you're doing a thing and you can't and
Speaker 1: like you're no one is telling you think about the
Speaker 1: implications and like how this might hunt people but rather
Speaker 1: like break stuff fast and like all the money, then
Speaker 1: you're just not thinking about these things, and then you
Speaker 1: end up in situations where like the there's a story
Speaker 1: recently about how Amazon ring like surveillance cameras like previously
Speaker 1: allowed UM employees to be able to like scan through
Speaker 1: that footage, right, And I think it was probably not
Speaker 1: intended to do that, but um, someone wasn't thinking about
Speaker 1: privacy as like a you know, a huge important thing
Speaker 1: when they were developing it, and so then it just
Speaker 1: created this mechanism that other people could exploit or manipulate. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on, Emma. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: good to have a professional expert voice about I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't know if I'm a professional expert voice.
Speaker 1: Well it's a professional paranoid voice. We need that. Um Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks so much. Where can people find you on Twitter?
Speaker 1: For as long as you decided to stay on Twitter?
Speaker 1: I'm on the internet on Twitter, sometimes uh, and my
Speaker 1: handle is Emma Chew, but it's TCU instead of so
Speaker 1: E M M A TCU, And I mostly tweet about
Speaker 1: scary surveillance shoot, which is right up are Alton cool. Thanks, Thanks, y'all.
Speaker 1: If you've got some thoughts about the lawnmower man, weird
Speaker 1: c g I that gave you nightmares, or anything else,
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