Just Attended A Public Lecture On Some Of The Dangers And Concerns With OpenAI (ready To Be Informed!)

Just attended a public lecture on some of the dangers and concerns with OpenAI (ready to be informed!) and the two men on the panel were introduced as First Name- Last Name- Job while the two women were not given the courtesy of a profession, and instead were minimised and miss-introduced.

‘This is Joe Blogs who is a lecturer and teacher’ vs ‘this is Jane, a sociologist’

‘This is John Doe, a reporter who’s written several books’ vs ‘ this is Betty and she is .. a social media… expert?’ I’m a social psychologist’

So if I wanted to follow up afterwards or thought one of them made good points I should Google ‘Jane Sociologist’ and pray the one I want is there?? Nice way to show which people you think we should know more about…

My god, at least give your panelist’s the FACADE of equal consideration and attention.

Roderick Usher is such a good bait and switch of a villain! You spend most of the show watching his ‘downfall’ and corruption, knowing that he’s going to become the monster Dupin knows him as. But you still want to believe he can’t be all that bad, and he somehow knows this and plays right into it until the very end

Roderick is telling his story and peppers it with all these asides and moments that make the audience feel some sympathy for him. That make us believe he either has good intentions beneath everything else, or originally had them and was corrupted by power.

He implies he truly didn’t know Ligodone was addictive: he tells Dupin ‘you belive the chemist when he you tells you the drug they made isn’t addictive, you trust your company not to abuse the use of that drug’. He reminds Dupin (and by extension the audience) that he ‘didn’t make the damn thing, I just sold it’. And then it cuts to show that the drug company was originally acquired by Roderick’s predecessor as CEO, who took his pitch for a pain free world and ran with it. This makes the audience feel some small sympathy for Roderick: not enough to think he’s a victim in anyway but it worms in there and makes him not as monstrous as he was a moment ago. It implies he is not solely to blame.

The audience see’s (we think) Roderick getting corrupted and swayed to the dark side of corporate greed. Brilliantly they show Roderick in present day acting in ways that seem in character for what we have learnt about him, and then flash back to the 70’s to reveal that those lines or attitudes where originally those of the old CEO who Roderick *hated*. It appears as if pure innocent and trusting Roderick who runs straight at injustice has been corrupted by the old CEO, has become the monster or villain that he once hated. It’s a small tragedy mixed in with a busy narrative but it impacts the audiences view of who Roderick once was. We interpret this as an originally good if naive man corrupted by power and wealth. Coupled with all those scenes in the 70’s of Madeline being more emotionless and pragmatic, pushing Roderick to be more manipulative and strategic, it appears as if he has been ‘forced’ or ‘groomed’ into his role against his original intentions. Part of the scenes we then spent in the 70’s is spent quietly mourning this version of Roderick, as we know it doesn’t survive his ascension.

But there are enough moments to imply that Roderick is still being an unreliable narrator. When Dupin first apologised for faking an informant, saying he feels that his lie had some role in the death of his children, Roderick’s first response is to run with that false impression. The way he responds to Dupin’s apology sounds like he’s gearing up to lay into him about his role in Roderick a children’s death, to double down and agree that Dupin does bear some blame for how they died.

And then one of his dead children appear to him. They make him pause, collect himself, and acknowledge what Roderik knows to be true: Dupin’s lie had no bearing on their death (his deal with Verna is the reason they’re dead) and any impact of that lie on their final fate is solely due to Roderick believing it and then placing a bounty on the supposed informants head. He turned his kids against one another, Dupin’s lie was just the vehicle. Roderik only voices this when he is forced to by his literal ghosts.

There are several moments when it appears his dead children are ‘keeping him honest’. When he’s getting off topic Perry or Leo appear to shock him and remind him to keep telling their stories. When he tries to downplay his part in the creation of Ligodone and argue that the horrors of its addiction are actually due to a street derivative which ‘hasn’t been FDA approved’ Camille’s appears behind him to force him to reconsider and eventually interrupts him so abruptly he trows a glass at her. When he’s lamenting Frederiks death and remembering him as a child not an adult (the last time Roderick was any kind of father to him) Fredrick takes over child/Frederick’s body to remind him of how he died and to get back to the story. It’s almost like he’s saying ‘you don’t get to remember me like this, you don’t get to miss remember and pick and chose: this is how I died and it’s because of you so keep going’. It’s only in hindsight so we realise this was Roderick trying to subconsciously control the narrative and change this confession, to reframe his actions and those deaths. And the kids didn’t let him get away with it.

Even Juno as a narrative device helps to hide Roderik’s rotten centre: she is such a bluntly honest and sincere person, she lends a little credence of honesty to Roderick. We think he must have some small good in him (albeit wrapped up in all the ‘old enough to be Juno’s father, makes the opioid she’s addicted to, doesn’t defend her from family cruelty’ BS of his ‘love’) as she is devoted to and loves him. Plus when we first meet her he states he loves her, he is always shown to be gently affectionate towards her, and even claims she is one of his ‘two favourite ladies’ along with his granddaughter who we know he dotes upon. But then at the very end his twisted horror show of devotion is revealed: anything close to love he holds for Juno is warped by her being a living totem of his product, something he can point to and use to further his cause. Juno is an object to him, one he enjoys complete control over. He has never seen her as a person in her own right, just a doll/puppet to prop up his drug empire, and he can’t separate her or his feelings for her from the drug she is dependant upon.

Added to this, towards the end of the show we discover that this ‘unburdening’ of Roderiks sins, this confession to a litany of crimes, which will give Dupin closure for both his life’s work and answers to Roderick’s betrayal of him in the 70’s… that isn’t even Roderick’s idea! Verna told him to confess. Even at the end Roderick isn’t mending bridges of his own volition.

And then his final revelation: he’s been lying the whole time, maybe his whole life, to everyone. He had always know people would die to ensure his success, that he would have to climb over ‘a mountain of bodies’ to get to the top and it never once made him pause. He wasn’t corrupted, he didn’t get poisoned by the old CEO and his views, he didn’t change to take on more of Madeleine’s views. He just noticed the best way to get work done and adapted.

Dupin had it right from the start: the only good that he ever saw in Roderik was a reflection of Annabelle lee’s. Like the moon has no inherent light of its own, Roderik hid his darkness behind the strength of Annabelle’s goodness until the time came when she couldn’t shine on him anymore. And he was revealed for the empty dead husk he had always been.

And Annabelle even said it herself, when then kids chose Roderick over her. They were starving and he told them to gorge themselves but he could never actually feed them, because he had nothing real to offer. Empty through and through, and just. So. Small.

Just seen a post which reminded me anew of some of my frustration with the Fantastic Beasts series and the train wreck it became.

Firstly and mainly: Why did they align Grindlewald with ‘preventing the holocaust’?!

There was literally no need for this plot point as Grindelwalds viewpoint and justifications had had little to no fleshing out in the original material (HP1-7). As a result any subsequent opposition to him no matter how well intentioned, well reasoned, or factually accurate necessitates someone arguing that either the holocaust isn’t likely to happen (and so Grindelwald is lying) or has to happen ‘for the good of the world’. You can state that you don’t believe he truly wants to save more lives, that his current methods are violent, that his future plans also look to cause pain and suffering, that his actions will cause division in the magical community….. and still the only take away is that you have to argue in defence of the holocaust.

And one on my main frustrations coming off of this is there was so much you could have done with the character and they didn’t use *any* of it. All we know from the primary material is: grindlewald was a dark lord around the time of the 2nd world war; he went to durmstrang, he was expelled when he was 16 and spent the summer with relatives in the UK where he met and charmed/radicalised a young Albus Dumbledore; he was essentially a supremacist who thought that wizards were inherently better than muggles and therefore deserved to rule over them; when confronted about these views by Aberforth he fights him, during this fight Ariane is killed (and no one is sure who actually killed her); he eventually steals a wand which is the Elder Wand; he is defeated in a duel by Albus Dumbledore and imprisoned in his own jail; he dies regretful of his actions at the hand of Voldemort.

There is literally SO MUCH room to add things in there, and none of it called for explaining his actions as ‘he predicted the holocaust would happen and is acting to prevent it’.

And I just wish they had fleshed out those viewpoints more or have given any creative thought to that.

Grindelwalds supremacy system (to make it distinct from Voldemort’s) could have viewed magical ability as more important than breeding. It’s implied in the books that some people are better at or stronger at some types of magic (Gilderoy Lockhart is very talented at memory charms, Ginny’s bat bogey hex is particularly strong) so his system of oppression could be based upon magical strength. You could have assessment checks or test within his ranks that ensure only the magically strong progress; a magically strong muggleborn is more respected than a magically weak pure blood (think Hermione vs OG Nevil). This would also support his slogan Magic is Might, and the view that wizards are inherently better - it is clearly only magical talent that should be rewarded with promotion and responsibility.

And this system therefore has its own fundamental flaws - just as a system based upon class and breeding will encourage nepotism, stifle innovation, and reward mediocrity, a system based upon rewarding brute strength with access and approval will result in corruption, a strong gang mentality, and violence. Introduce characters that show this, just like the Malfoy’s did for blood supremacy.

And he should have been written as a supremacist: an eloquent, articulate, charming one but one with a flawed and corrupted world view. Someone who is able to win over people to his side, a charismatic leader figure. I wish they had modelled him more like a cult leader; someone who with the sheer force of their personality recruited wizards and witches to fight against the stature of secrecy (under which they and their families have lived their entire lives) and advocate for ruling over muggles. There’s something compelling about him, and once people are swayed by his view they find it hard to leave.

I wish they had orchestrated several confrontations with Dumbledore and Grindelwald where they fought head to head but circumstances always got in the way of them fighting to the death: one side was evacuating a position so one of them had to flee with the fighters to protect them, one was only on a recon mission and so fled to fight another day, one was injured in a previous fight and so was trying to escape the whole time, etc etc. There could have been a run up of fights (like Harry Potter and Voldemort had every year in the books - it’s formulaic but it works) leading up to the final flight between them at the end of the (supposed) 5th movie. The confrontation a long time coming and the audience dying to see them finally loose all against one another. And them not meeting before or outside of these fights? Harry/Dumbledore and Voldemort didn’t meet outside of specific fights, there are magical ways to hide and cloak yourself to prevent attack. Grindelwald stays in a secret location, unplottable and with few people around him: so the only times to attack him are when he moves into the open. There you go, lack of confrontations solved.

You could even have had him not graduate to violence right away, or have the violence be small and not able to be traced to him. Mirror the rise of the N*zi party and H*tler in that initially people don’t take Grindelwald seriously, then they won’t think the small time attacks are linked to him in anyway, then people start to agree with some of his points, and he is suddenly a leader of a ‘revolution’ and it’s too hard to oppose him now. The first few confrontations with Dumbledore or the audience stand in ‘good guy’ could even be before it’s known that he is behind any attacks and it’s literally a meeting of minds, a discussion of view points, the good guy thinks Grindlewalds behind these recent attacks but no one is going to believe him as Grindelwald is an upstanding public figure.

Don’t have him just waltz into a house and kill a baby for no f*cking reason just to remind the audience ‘oh yeah this is the bad guy, don’t like him’. Have him be charming and nice and persuasive to someone and then have a comment or a cut scene or something where he describes a future workforce of muggles to make magical products like someone describing a sweatshop, have him talk about managing the needs of muggles or ‘culling their breeding’ like a farmer would a herd of cows, have him mention the killing or maiming of a muggle like they are an animal or a pet. There are so many chilling ways to show lack of humanity or care, to show how beneath him he feels muggles are, and the absolute worst and most sloppy would be… to kill a baby in its crib for literally no reason.

And the magic system!!

I wished so much for something different for the USA but the system they got in this is just appalling.

And when you think about it, it could have been so much richer!

Like The Mayflower was 1620 and the Salem witch trials were in the 1690’s… so almost from the get go of the colonisation of America, the magical and non magically communities would have been separated. So for the majority of the colonisations cum settlement of the USA witches and wizards would have been in hiding.

In the UK we see magical enclaves hidden away in muggle surroundings (fake doors and walls, additional buildings squeezed between others) but these places and cities have been around since long before the Statute of Secrecy. London was the Roman city Londinium. So when the statue came into effect they had to seal away their magical districts and houses, but they still existed in the same space as previously integrated but now solely muggle architecture.

Not so the case in America. Chicago for example wasnt ‘founded’ as a city until the 1780’s. You could argue that as the magical community had been separate for almost 100 years at this point they might have walled off a whole section of the city for themselves to live in. Or even founded their own cities, which you needed magic to access. As colonisers/settlers moved West you could imagine a group of solely magical people creating their own enclaves. Society and muggle/wizard culture would have evolved completely differently than what it had been and became in the UK due to this concurrent growth and settlement.

Americans think about their national identity in a way unique to them, due to how recently their country was ‘created’. Wouldn’t this translate to the magical community? Would magical family’s talk about coming over on the ‘first Portkey’ the same way people claim they can ‘trace their family back to the Mayflower’? Would they measure their standing in the magical community not on wether they were pure blood, or from a Noble House… but instead on if their ancestor helped found a city, or settle a state?

Immigration/emigration/refugees, what makes someone American, the fight for American citizenship… does this translate to the magical community? Do they view European Wizards or Asia-pacific wizards as ‘not American’ if they’ve only recently moved, or working on a temp visa? Do they worry about other wizards and witches overstaying their visas or their welcome, and disrupting the American system of government? Is their a feeling of the ‘old world’ magical communities being slow and behind, stuck in the antiquated past?

In the UK setting of the HP books grounding the racial struggle in the class system worked perfectly as anyone living within that system understands it and accepts it intrinsically - the arguments and fights over blood purity are just British classism given a different name. But what’s the American version? Is it how recently you settled (is something like ‘first Generation witch’ similar to mud-blood, but it implies your parents only recently came to the USA and so you’re not a real citizen yet?) or if your family has been here from the start (Mayflower Mast families is slang for those who came over with the first port-key, the Mast of the first ship) or where you settled (just as some cities in the USA are seen as historical or ‘established’, is there a similar viewpoint to living in an all magical city vs living in a muggle city and hiding).

And due to the long lives of magical people you could have introduced characters in America who were the Malfoy’s or the Black’s - not due to pedigree or age or being titled, but because their grandparents founded/built/created the American St Mungos, the USA’s diagon Alley. Heck even have someone at MACUSA is called Ilvermorney because their grandmother founded the school. They have a younger sibling still there but they are working their way up the Autor ranks, likely going to aim to run MACUSA at some point, their aunt did in the 1870’s…. Basically make them the Kennedys of magical America.

The list just goes on and I get so angry when I think about what could have been! There were so many cool things they could have done when expanding the world of HP to another country, or when fleeing out the main villains methods and plot. And to see that waste on what they did do, which is now cancelled anyway… it’s just so soul destroying.

What I’ve learned about how my brain works:

About 2 weeks ago I finalised plans with my father to help me put a new fence post in my garden. The old one had rotted at the bottom, it was leaning, he said it would be the work of an afternoon to dig out the base, secure and concrete a new one and attach it to the existing fence. Date and plans confirmed, I ordered all the supplies to be collected on the day of the build.

This little bit of ‘DIY prep’ clearly activated an area of my brain which had been dormant through the winter.

That night I decided I would also like more green in my dining room: I’d seen and saved something on Pinterest several months before, so now was clearly the perfect time to make it. I ordered plastic hedge panels, cut them to size, wove them together using spare twine, wired the whole thing with spare string lights, and used green zip ties to attach fake succulents all over. I then drilled 5 large bolt holes in my wall to hang this art, ordered enough 2x4 wood to make a frame, measured and cut to size, stained it, attached corner brackets and TaDa…. 5ftx5ft wall art where 3 days before there was nothing.

So main DIY day comes and we do the thing, the new fence post is up and it’s all secure and great. Job jobed. My father leaves.

Once again my brain wakes up and goes ‘we like this accomplished feeling, more please’.

In the 5 days since the fence post was fixed I have:

Bought 2 more bags of white gravel (my front garden has needed this for almost 5 months), Put weed killer down on the existing gravel, in a garden shop sale I’ve bought 4 more large terracotta plant pots, bought 9 new summer/autumn heathers to go in them, sourced enough wood mulch, peat moss, and ericious soil to fill them all, reorganised and styled these new pots alongside my existing plant pots filled with winter/spring heathers, and weeded the rest of my front garden; ordered gravel boards to support and provide a level base for my small area of decking, sealed them and secured them to one another; researched and chosen the rose bush I will be planting in the spring; chosen and ordered enough fence paint to cover my garden (and ordered fence paint brushes), decided on the colour of my kitchen tile paint and bought foam rollers so I can start next weekend.

What I HAVE NOT DONE in the last 5 days, or the 5 before that when I first felt this dormant DIY urge:

Called my local plumber/handyman to fix the crack in my bathroom sink, which has been there since September, and means I can’t properly use said sink and have had to have a plastic bowl placed inside so I can wash my hands and/or face.

This weekend I plan to do more DIY and probably mine-sweep my local store for cheap plants to take home and ‘rescue’. Despite my best internal efforts, I will likely not call the plumber.

I don’t know why I’m like this.

Random thought spawned by TikTok: Successful multigenerational parenting should take notes from Star Trek.

The captain and first officer are the command team: they decide (within reason) where the ships going, how fast it moves, how it gets there etc. They call the shots and the buck stops with them. They are ultimately responsible for the ship. And they may switch roles as the situation calls for it, with first officer becoming captain as needed, but at the end of the day they operate as a team.

These are the parents.

But if you’ve set up your village correctly, they can be the bridge crew. Experts in their field, ready with advice, options and to provide support. Sometimes the captain shouldn’t make a decision before checking in with one of them for their knowledge or advice. But no matter what advice they get, the command crew should be confident in making their decisions because it’s what they think is best. They’ll have to justify it later if the admiralty have questions, so they need to be sure of their choices regardless of who gave what advice.

And if you’re a member of the bridge crew (looking at you Grandparents) you need to accept that you’re not in the command chair. You might give your expert opinion and advice on a situation, but the captain is likely getting advice from multiple people and their decision probably takes all that advice into consideration. You (the navigation officer) might think the course forward is obvious, but another expert (the communications officer) has more information for the captain which you’re not privy to which informs the command teams decision.

And once the captain has made a decision, you can’t contest it. Like the ref in any sports game, their call is final.

For the ship to sail smoothly, the bridge crew needs to work as one, and support the command teams decision. And yeah, sometimes the captain is going to make a bad call. But then you debrief afterwards and learn where you went wrong. What should the command team do differently next time? How should they weigh or value different peoples expertise or advice?

As the bridge crew, you’re there to support command. Advise and inform yes, but ultimately to aid command so they can make the hard calls.

And giving them honest advice, to the best of your knowledge, and then aiding them once they’ve made a decision? That makes them more likely to turn to you again in the future.

And we can take it a step further - sometimes the command crew will be away from the helm, maybe injury or personal reasons. And they’ll need to appoint someone else (‘Sulu, you have the con’). They’re only going to pass that command to someone they trust can handle the responsibility. If you’re constantly questioning or overriding their decisions, how likely are they to trust you in the captains chair?

The ship works best when the whole bridge crew work as one. Every person is a valued member of the team, and at the end of the day the ship is the priority.

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Don’t know how well I articulated this but the analogy wouldn’t leave my mind…

The 13th Doctor

I’m just so happy. For a fantastic show, with all the lore, back story and potential that Dr Who has, that the new regeneration will be a woman is brilliant. And hats off to the creators, I think they did it right. When the idea first came up a couple of years ago I was sceptical in a caught off guard way. I’d never thought about the doctor being ABLE to be a woman, let alone if it was something I’d be happy with. But the writers made Missy her own character and made us love her for her own evilness and snark, for her wit and sheer force of personality. And only then did they reveal she was as once The Master. And she only got better and more complex this season. The arc with her and the previous regeneration perfectly encapsulates how a character can develop over time (now fighting alongside the Doctor instead of against him) while showing that the character can retain the same presence, gravitas and diabolical nature regardless of their gender. The scenes with those two were a delight to watch.

And now that we’ve seen that this can work and that a female Time Lord can be a powerful character I really can’t wait to see what they do with Jodie’s Doctor. What will her take on the character be (Tennant was brooding but bouncy, Smiths was a bit manic and yet dark, Capaldi's I found slightly more beaten down and world weary)? How will she interpret this change? Who knows but I can’t wait to see! Well done to the BBC for doing this and making a bold choice for the character and the show. Let’s breathe some new life into the fandom!