Dialogue With The Stars

Gladly!

A bit more complicated, but sure!

They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.

Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.

You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.

This article specifically notes:

For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.

Other important quotes:

What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.

Two things back that up:

There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.

Bioluminescence series by Rob Rey

This is because there are two parts to memories - their encoding and their recall. The encoding determines their availability, their recall determines their accessibility. The reason why trauma memory and childhood amnesia are different is in this distinction. Trauma memory is often encoded differently, bypassing to the limbic system where it is stored as intrinsic memory. It can’t be recalled because it was never encoded. Childhood amnesia, however, seems to indicate that the memories are encoded, but we lose access to them as we age. This is most likely due to the development of brain structures that fundamentally change our encoding and recall of memory as we get older.

Trauma isn’t necessarily ‘stored in the body’ and doesn’t necessarily have triggers. These are common experiences but not universal. The 'encoded in the limbic system’ theory has been disproven. Traumatic memories are re-experienced physically mainly because remembering causes our system to flood with stress hormones. There it also no evidence that trauma is stored in our 'ancient animal brain’. (The body keeps the score is a bad pseudoscience book)

'Repressed memories’ don’t really exist. There are memories that are difficult to remember because they happened a long time ago and there are memories that you’ve systematically trained yourself to avoid thinking about because they upset you, but they are still accessible to you. But if a therapist says you need hypnosis or some shit to 'recover’ memories: run. That’s dangerous quack science and is likely to result in false-memory recovery which can really complicate existing trauma.

Intrusive remembering is a more common trauma-response than memory avoidance.