To Whom It May Concern

 

I’ve been going over the screenplay that I abandoned writing a while back…if I’m in a psychological experiment related to what I wrote there, can I please nope out of it on account of knowing wtf might be going on? Thanks lol.

Anyone here like philosophy?

Comedy’s a great genre too, but I think a slice-of-life genre would result in the happiest life…

“Slice of Life series don't usually have much of a plot or, if taken to extreme, even the omnipresent Conflict, but they don't really need one, and many Slice of Life stories use a lack of conflict to serve peaceful escapism rather than realism.”

So whenever my drama bar turns green, it’s now slice-of-life? Sounds good to me.

“If I was Russian I would get the hell out of there as fast as I could”

Who would actually argue against investing in this

Why isn’t this being researched/invested in like AI is right now?

Source link: https://dig.watch/updates/researchers-are-working-on-an-unhackable-quantum-internet-in-new-york-city

And here’s the argument for it…I haven’t read it, but this book was one of the first things to come up when I searched for unhackable internet.

Summary: Like most aspects of modern existence, more and more of our financial lives have migrated to the digital realm. With the benefits of ease that our Internet allows us, that transition also raises numerous – and dangerous – threats to national security, our money, and the systems we use to store and transfer it. In TheUnhackable Internet, financial services and technology expert Thomas P. Vartanian exposes the vulnerabilities of the many networks that we rely on today as well as the threats facing the integrity of our national security and financial services sector.

From cyberattacks by foreign adversaries like China and Russia, the explosion of cryptocurrency, the advancement of ransomware, phishing, surveillance apps, spying software, and logic bombs, along with the increasing savvy and daring shown by Internet hackers, the next financial panic is likely to be delivered to us through use or abuse of technology. The Unhackable Internet describes how society can remake an Internet that was never conceived as a secure environment and badly tainted by the original sin of substandard coding. Vartanian argues for increasing the use of private and offline network infrastructures, controlling the ownership of Internet infrastructure, and imposing enhanced authentication, governance, and enforcement standards. This online universe would look more like our analog lives, authenticating all digital traffic to a real person and removing any virtual traveler that violated the new rules of the road.

The Unhackable Internet poses a challenge to America: take the lead and create a coalition of democratic nations to implement financial cyber strategies or be left with no counterweight short of military power to respond to those who weaponize technology. This comprehensive and compelling book makes it clear that nothing less than the control of global economies is up for grabs, and that how we use technology is our choice.

The Unhackable Internet: How Rebuilding Cyberspace Can Create Real Security and Prevent Financial Collapse

by Thomas P. Vartanian

https://www.amazon.com/Unhackable-Internet-Rebuilding-Cyberspace-Financial/dp/1633888835

“He bravely stood up to the corruption, the violence and all the bad things that the Putin government was doing,” Biden said. “In response, Putin had him poisoned, he had him arrested, he had him prosecuted for fabricated crimes, he sentenced him to prison, he held him in isolation … Even in prison he was a powerful voice for the truth.”

 

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/16/russian-activist-and-putin-critic-alexei-navalny-dies-in-prison

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny dies in prison

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna79718 

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in prison, the country's prison service said Friday, following a yearslong struggle against official corruption and President Vladimir Putin's government that saw him survive several poisoning attempts. 

He was 47.

Navalny was poisoned with a military nerve agent while on a business trip in Russia in 2020 — an attempt on his life that he blamed directly on Putin — and spent his final years behind bars as the Russian leader reshaped the country to rally behind his war in Ukraine. Navalny's death comes as the Kremlin is preparing to orchestrate another election victory for Putin in March.

Navalny was serving a combined 30 ½-year jail sentence when he died. He went missing in Russia's penal system in December, eventually turning up at a high-security penal colony in a remote town above the Arctic Circle.

Russia's Federal Prison Service said in a statement that Navalny had died after feeling unwell following a walk Friday.

“On February 16, 2024, in penal colony No. 3, convict A.A. Navalny felt unwell after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness,” the prison service for the Yamalo-Nenets region, where Navalny was moved, said in a statement on its website.

“The facility’s medical workers immediately arrived at the scene and an emergency medical team was called in. All necessary resuscitation measures have been carried out, but they did not yield positive results. Emergency medics confirmed the death of the convict,” the statement added.

There was no immediate information about what exactly caused Navalny's death, with the region's investigative committee saying it has launched a "procedural investigation."

Navalny's allies have long raised concerns about his health and poor conditions in jail, where they said he had to spend many days in crammed "punishment cells" for the most minor of conduct violations.

Putin has been informed, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed, according to the Russian state news agency Tass.

The Kremlin has always denied poisoning Navalny, and throughout his life has tried to downplay his importance in Russian public life, often refusing to use his name.

A spokesperson for the opposition leader said on X that they did not have any confirmation or information about his death. "Russian authorities publish a confession that they killed Alexey Navalny in prison," said Leonid Volkov, a close ally of many years, in a post on X. "We do not have any way to confirm it or to prove this isn’t true."

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an exiled former oligarch-turned-opposition-figure also said on X: "If this is true, then, regardless of the formal cause [of death], the responsibility for [Navalny's] premature death is borne by Vladimir Putin, who first authorized the poisoning of Alexei and then put him in prison."

A thorn in the Kremlin's side

Navalny's death leaves Russia’s opposition, wounded by years of harassment and prosecution, without a clear leader. All of Putin’s most high-profile critics are now either dead, jailed or in exile. 

Navalny was, undoubtedly, the biggest thorn in the Kremlin’s side. 

For more than a decade, he led nationwide protests against the authorities, ran for office to challenge members of the Russian establishment and set up a network of campaign offices across the country that have since been dismantled.

Born in 1976 in the tiny town of Bytyn, near Moscow, Navalny was educated as a lawyer and economist, but entered politics in 2008, starting his anti-corruption fund, FBK, three years later. 

He was known for his oratory skills, as well as his use of the online space to promote the results of his investigations and spread his ideal of what he called the “wonderful Russia of tomorrow.” His digital savvy made him particularly popular among Russia’s more democratically minded teenagers and youth. 

Navalny rose to prominence as Russia’s most outspoken Kremlin critic after leading a series of anti-corruption investigations into members of the Russian elite. 

His 2017 exposure of the lavish lifestyle of Dmitry Medvedev, a former president and prime minister, led to mass protests. And an investigation into a luxurious “secret palace” on Russia’s Black Sea coast, purportedly owned by Putin, resulted in a wave of indignation across Russia in 2021. 

Navalny tried to run against Putin in the 2018 presidential election, but was barred from entering the race because of a 2014 embezzlement conviction, which he categorically denied as fabricated to keep him out of politics. Russian officials made a point of not referring to Navalny by name to avoid raising his profile in public. 

While on a business trip in Russia in August 2020, Navalny was poisoned with a military nerve agent in an attempt on his life that he blamed directly on Putin.

Navalny survived his 2020 poisoning, thanks to the insistence of his family that he be airlifted to Germany, where he underwent treatment and a long rehabilitation process. 

The Kremlin denied any involvement in his poisoning, which was condemned by Western governments and led to a further straining of relations with Russia.

Navalny nonetheless decided to return to Russia in early 2021 and was arrested upon landing on charges stemming from the 2014 embezzlement case. He was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison for a parole violation linked to that conviction. The decision came days after more than 5,000 people were detained across Russia in rallies supporting Navalny.

His allies have also been persecuted, and his anti-corruption fund was declared an extremist organization a few months after his sentencing, forcing it to shut down and most of the top staff to flee abroad. 

He was tried on new charges of fraud and contempt of court and was sentenced to nine more years in jail. Then in August, he was sentenced to a further 19 years in a maximum security penal colony on charges of extremism, in what his allies and the international community called a Kremlin campaign to keep him incarcerated forever. Navalny has denied all charges against him as politically motivated.

His supporters have raised concerns about his treatment in custody and detention conditions, including access to proper medical care and frequent isolation in a tiny punishment cell.

In an interview with NBC News in 2021, Putin said he could not guarantee that Navalny would get out of prison alive.

But even in jail, Navalny continued to challenge Putin.

In his signature defiant but sarcastic style, Navalny detailed the realities of the Russian penitentiary system and promoted new anti-corruption investigations his team had been working on in exile. He issued anti-Kremlin statements through his lawyers and spoke openly against the Russian government’s actions in Ukraine.

He was designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International in 2021, with the U.S. and other governments calling for his release. 

A film about his life won an Oscar for best documentary feature last year. 

But the win caused controversy in Ukraine, where some critics painted Navalny as a Russian nationalist and pointed to comments in 2014 in which he said he sees no difference between Ukrainians and Russians — a sentiment Putin used as one of the arguments behind his war eight years later. Navalny, however, criticized the Russian-backed insurgency in east Ukraine and later described the full-scale invasion as both unjust and self-defeating. 

Navalny leaves behind his wife, Yulia, daughter, Daria, and son, Zahar.

Shut up and take my money

There should be a streaming service that does nothing but buy and bring back canceled shows

A UBI bill was introduced in 2023…

 

So a UBI [Universal Basic Income, or the government giving people free money as opposed to the opposite, where you pay taxes (money) to the government] could come about through a bill being passed in Congress as opposed to voting in a presidential candidate that advertises supporting a UBI.

September 27, 2023: Today, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), announced the reintroduction of the Guaranteed Income Pilot Program Act, legislation that would establish a nationwide pilot program to test the viability of a federally funded income support program that keeps more American families from experiencing permanent financial fallout and lasting poverty from a single unexpected crisis. While millionaires and billionaires thrive on the labor of hard-working Americans, those working families see just a fraction of profits and continue to live paycheck-to-paycheck. The Coronavirus pandemic, while devastating for everyday families, resulted in the wealthiest Americans doubling their fortunes and widening the gap between the super-rich and the rest of us.  

The COVID crisis exposed the fragility of our economy in its interactions with working people. At the same time, it demonstrated the real and meaningful ability of federal and state programs to keep Americans out of poverty.

“Many policymakers have seen this pandemic as a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, and while that may be true for businesses or markets, for millions of Americans, this is just one more emergency threatening to wipe out what little savings they have, to finally push them to homelessness, to reinforce the fact that in the wealthiest nation in the world, too many families are just a single mishap away from financial devastation,” said Watson Coleman. “What we learned when Congress made the decision to send economic impact payments through the CARES Act and American Rescue Plan was that our government can prevent people from falling into poverty, it can build a floor beneath which we say no one in this country should fall. This bill is all about looking at ways to make that floor permanent, giving more families a sense of economic security.”

Press Release Link: 

https://watsoncoleman.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/watson-coleman-leads-introduction-of-guaranteed-income-pilot-program

AI Character Casting/Customization Timeline

 

YouTube Link: ‘Twilight’ Characters’ Genders Swapped in Reimagining

 

Really interesting progress in the timeline for AI character casting/customization. One day, multiple options will be available besides full user-done customization, like having a cast that looks historically accurate, a version with diverse cast members (which will probably be the version shown in theaters), and a gender-swapped version like they did with the new Twilight book.

Edit: It was released 8 years ago, but I just heard about it now on Reddit?

Screenshot: