The headline reads, “Man dies after police hogtie him at Mississippi concert”.
Compelling, indeed, and a sad tale from Karen Brooks of Reuters.
And now here’s a picture of a cow kissing a kitten.
This incongruity is brought to you by the letter A, as in automation.
Many of us were raised in a time that looked forward to the future, to the age of angels, to the days of miracles and wonder, to the time when most of our economical problems would be solved by new and amazing technologies. Many of us actually arrived in the future. Here it is. We find ourselves in it. And it is disappointing. We no longer cure anything, as the money is in lifelong treatment. Corporations have abandoned R&D and spend their surpluses on generating more surpluses from stock buybacks. Only billionaires travel to space. And a whole generation of brilliant mathematical minds has not been spent on filling the remaining gaps in the Standard Model, our deepest understanding of the universe and its history, but in constructing models for Wall Street traders. And we do not have robots. We have instead machines that make us do the work at supermarkets.
It is always a matter of priorities.
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Image note: “Fellow Citizens: Now is the time to consume. Why skimp when you deserve more?” Detail of frame from Ergo Proxy episode 1, “Pulse of the Awakening”.)
Mudede, Charles. “MIT Graduate Develops a Program that Will End Theft at Self-Checkout Machines”. Slog. 26 February 2015.
Okay, in the first place, yes, there is obviously something amiss.
The Salon article itself is by Kendall Anderson, and bears a familiar, queasy sentence for a headline: “I wish I’d never reported my rape”. It is, of course, as depressing as you might expect; and it is also another one of those pieces that ought to be some sort of required reading.
I sit in the windowless interrogation room, fingers brushing against the cool metal of handcuffs attached to the chair, and try to comprehend what the detective sitting across from me is asking.
“Were you a virgin?” he says, his lips curling slightly as he repeats the question. “Explain to me, how could you have been bleeding if you weren’t on your period? Have you had sex before?”
I feel my face flush with embarrassment as I think about how to respond. Before I can say anything, there’s a knock at the door and another officer walks in.
“The suspect’s attorney is here.”
Suspect? My stomach drops. Did he really just refer to me as a suspect?
The detective turns to his colleague.
“She agreed not to have the lawyer come in for this.”
I open my mouth to object. Our “agreement” consisted of the detective asking me why I needed a lawyer if I was innocent. Before I can speak, the other officer leaves, the door closes and it’s just me and the detective again, alone in the windowless room.
There are so many things to say at this point.
Perhaps it is just, well, you know … me … but it seems there is something absurdly amusing about a bot trolling George Takei.
Okay, definitely me.
This Is 