Weapons of Privilege

About a decade ago, I did a series of talks at various conferences entitled “cyberwar is bullshit” – the problem, I felt, was that the US was talking about being deeply afraid of cyberattack from Eurasia (or was it Eastasia?) but there was considerable irresponsible talk about “weapons of mass destruction-like capability.” Industry insiders like myself wound up divided as to whether it was likely/practical, or good marketing/a chance to make a fast buck. There were a lot of fast bucks made.

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Fall Colors

This is what it looks like out here, this time of year. There’s a house up the street that has a yellow tree like this, and a red one, close together. Some years they both go colors at the same time, and it’s eye-bending.

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It’s Just “Metadata”

I’ve always been suspicious of power.* One of the warning signs I’m especially alert to is when I see language being bent or waterboarded in the interest of obscuring facts, rather than clarifying them. When a new word suddenly begins to take on a heavily-freighted meaning, e.g: “ethnic cleansing” instead of “genocide” I immediately ask myself “why that word, and not the other perfectly useable words?” The sudden promotion of or carpet-bombing with a new term is often an indicator that someone has decided to start using a new word with a subtly different definition – basically, lying by redefining the truth.

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Sazz

Back in 2004 or so, I had the idea of shooting some stock photography intended for digital post-manipulation. I don’t have the 3d bug, but I was doing a lot of work with models and I thought it’d be pretty cool to provide action poses and random weirdness, for other artists to interact with.

At the time I was posting stuff on a website called “renderosity” where there was a small group of photographers who did stock, so I posted a comment “Hey, if anyone wants models – cosplay girls, whatever – in particular poses, let me know! I do a lot of photography and maybe I can just bang you off a shot or two!”    I only got one response, from a guy who went by “Sazz.”

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