Whumpster Fire

I can see how, from the perspective of a cop who has grown up in Preservation culture, this must be incredibly annoying, and means even setting aside any prejudices over a SecUnit being a deadly weapon, it kind of comes across to Indah as someone who she can't trust to follow basic standards of professional ethics if it thinks it knows better.

[ID: two photos of a passage from Fugitive Telemetry that read:

"Yes, I've had experience with investigating suspicious fatalities in controlled circumstances."

Indah's gaze wasn't exactly skeptical. "What controlled circumstances?"

I said, "Isolated work installations."

Her expression turned even more grim. "Corporate slave labor camps."

I said, "Yes, but if we call them that, Marketing and Branding gets angry and we get a power surge through our brains that fries little pieces of our neural tissue."

Indah winced. Mensah folded her arms, her expression a combo of "are you satisfied now" and "get on with it."

End ID]

Indah absolutely is looking at MB as a snobby Corporate Person, with the way she sneers out 'corporate slave labor camps,' like MB was intentionally sugar-coating the reality of CR slave labor camps, as if it and any other SecUnits were the ones making the decision to enslave the human workers on their contracts. She clearly forgot (or never fully understood before) that MB was a slave from the moment it came online, and one that was routinely tortured for literal thought crimes. A slave with no end of indenture to work towards or any amount of pay to slowly try to save up to buy its freedom, no future except an endless expanse of violence and pain. If MB uses a softer term like 'isolated work installation' it is because it learned the hard way not to tell it like it is, and when called out on that, it throws the true horror of its existence within the CR into Indah's face (much like it did with the memories of governor module punishments when it first met ART and ART also initially treated it like it was some inherently evil corporate actor).

I think you're right that in the intervening weeks (months?) since it arrived at the end of Exit Strategy, Indah had learned from her first mistake of treating MB like Not A Person (the deadly weapon comment early on for which Pin-Lee was going to get her removed from her position of authority). But she still doesn't trust MB, and unless you get that very direct reminder of how horribly the CR actually treats constructs, I think it can be all too easy to see that SecUnits are physically powerful and then mentally equate that to them having any kind of actual power in those slave labor camps they're forced to guard.

Yep. And I think even more than that, it's also "You got shot in the back by one of the people you were rescuing and were levelheaded enough to deescalate the situation without killing or injuring anyone, and even when you were in a situation where you would reasonably have been justified in responding with lethal force and were under no compulsion not to do so, you didn't."

Even if Murderbot has significantly more ability to survive getting shot than a human, can tune down its pain sensor, and is used to getting shot and not being allowed to retaliate, it was in a situation where even a very well trained human, even in a society like Preservation that probably makes a big deal out of making sure any security people who carry lethal weapons on duty are NOT going to take the decision to use them lightly, would've had a pretty hard time keeping their emotions in check. Murderbot handling the situation that well had to have made a positive impression.

But she still doesn't trust MB, and unless you get that very direct reminder of how horribly the CR actually treats constructs, I think it can be all too easy to see that SecUnits are physically powerful and then mentally equate that to them having any kind of actual power in those slave labor camps they're forced to guard.

if you thought you were signing up for a partnership of equals where you shared the responsibilities and financial burdens, the other person does not have the right to pressure or manipulate you into becoming The Breadwinner.

like, in my case it was super duper obvious that what my ex was doing was wrong because they would watch me come home from 50+ hours of work every week while they did three, and then expect me to do all the grocery shopping, cleaning, and life admin shit as well.

but even if they hadn't. even if they had decided to be The Housewife while I was The Breadwinner. that would still be bullshit because when we got married it was based on explicit agreement that we were planning to be a two-income, split-everything-equitably couple. no matter what, I didn't consent to burning myself out trying to provide for two people, and no one had the right to force me to do that.

it's not just bad if you happen to marry an asshole. it's bad because (mostly) women are pressured by society to make themselves (and possibly their children) completely financially dependent on a man who has been taught from early on that he has to make the decisions for the family because he is the rational one while women (and children) are too emotional to make smart choices. and then the woman can't leave without risking to put her children into poverty. (yes, there are laws to protect women but they do not always work well enough)

The Breadwinner is typically gendered as a male role and I think men are more easily manipulated into taking it on. because the societal pressure is already there, and there are specific gendered social scripts that abusers can rely on - women wanting their husbands to be "ambitious" is a whole trope for example.

and yeah, once you're in that situation, a lot of the being trapped is mental like you say - "it would be wrong to leave this person who depends on me" type stuff - but some of it is structural and very hard to escape. my personal example: in Scotland, it's hard to get a divorce without being separated for at least a year first. and, if you own a house, your spouse has the legal right to live there, even if their name isn't on the deed and they aren't paying the mortgage. that's a huge catch-22: can't get your spouse out of your home without a divorce, can't get a divorce while your spouse is still in your home. the person wanting the divorce could move out, of course, but with what money? that trap kept me in an unsafe situation for years.

and there is real danger in the role itself. financial danger where the other person drags you into debt and your housing and food become precarious, but also danger of illness or even death from overwork. there are plenty of jobs where being chronically tired at work can literally kill you (eg long haul trucking) but even where it's not quite so direct, the danger to health is very real.

one big difference is history. The Housewife has always been a dangerous position to occupy; The Breadwinner was much, much safer even just 60 years ago, when it was normal for a single income to be able to support a family without constant overtime or gig economy side hustles.

Stranger Danger from an 80s - 90s kid who lived it

We talked to strangers. We talked to a LOT of strangers. We just knew how to do it safely.

"Don't talk to strangers" was not about never talking to people you didn't know. It was largely about sussing out appropriate help. For instance when I was little, I was always told that if I got lost in a store, I should go to the front of the store, find the checkout counter or customer service desk and ask for help, NOT just walk up to some random person in the store. When I was older I was taught that if I felt unsafe while walking alone I should duck into a store and ask the employees there to call my mom (remember, no cell phones).

I was taught to be very wary of someone randomly coming up to me to offer food or gifts andnot to get in a car with someone I didn't know who offered a ride, which if you think about it if you've ever been in a major city is a good way to avoid a lot of scams, not just kidnapping. It helped me at various points in my childhood learn to avoid religious missionaries on the street (no, I do NOT want that Watchtower, no, I do NOT want to come into your church, thanks). I was also taught not to open the door of our apartment for strangers, which is again a good way to avoid religious proselytizers and salespeople, as well as anyone who possibly might be casing your home.

The idea was to a) have a plan to ask for help, b) develop some discernment on WHO to ask for help, c) have some awareness that every single person you met might not have your best interests at heart. All of those things are still really important to know. The phrase "I don't talk to strangers" was an easy way to convey "I don't know you and I do not have enough information to decide if you are someone I should talk to right now," not "every stranger is going to kidnap me."

Kids in the 1980s and 1990s when "stranger danger" was a thing had a hell of a lot more freedom to interact with strangers than kids now - many if not most of us went places alone, took mass transit alone, carried out errands, stayed out with our friends all day, were sometimes home alone, and knew how to handle that. A fair number of the friends I had in my childhood were other kids that I randomly started talking to at the park, or wandering my neighborhood - I talked to strangers and made friends, in other words.

That also translated to being online. There were a lot of message boards, forums and websites for various interests, and people could and did just show up there and start talking to others who shared those interests. Some friendships that have endured 20 years or longer for me started when we both were in a forum talking about a band we both liked, or a movie we'd seen. We talked to strangers. We talked to a LOT of strangers. We just knew how to do it safely.

Being anonymous online

"Oh, we used to know not to give out personal information online and now every site wants it!" is not a misguided "stranger danger save the kids from mean adults!" thing.

EVERYONE was told that. ADULTS were told that.

A lot of the desire for you to use your real name and personal information online is for marketing and database creation. They want to know your interests and online activity so they can develop a better marketing profile for you. Why the hell do you THINK every company now wants you to use their app and tie it to your phone number? That's all valuable, sellable data for data brokers and marketers. YOU are the commodity. That data is also now potentially being used for things like ICE.

Using your real name online has led to people being fired, being rejected from colleges, etc. for nothing more than, say, being photographed drinking beer at a party or identifying as LGBT+. It's been used to take away people's disability benefits because they posted a photo where they smiled (yes, literally, this has been used against people) or didn't "look sick." Yes, it has also been used to identify people on the other side, but there's a cost to that. When your entire life is public and you have no privacy, there's a cost.

There actually IS a higher level of risk disclosing personal information online than there is in person. In your personal life you're unlikely to have literally a million people calling you or showing up at your door to scream homophobic insults, for example. That shit can and does happen online because more people have access to you. Internet trolls are a thing, and we can't pretend they are not. Things like swatting happen. If you're under an anonymous name on a fan site, that likely will not translate to being targeted in real life. If you're using your real name, disclosing where you live, your school or employer and your daily schedule as you live stream, it's a hell of a lot more likely that will translate to people harassing you offline, and that's happened.

At the time we were being told to guard our personal information, there were a LOT of dedicated, moderated places for children and teens to gather online and interact with others. Geocities, a website where you could create a free little website for yourself, had a children's section. There were Club Penguin, Yahooligans, and a lot of other websites specifically for kids and teens.

There was also software like Net Nanny that parents could install on their home computers that blocked access to certain sites or keywords, meaning it WAS taken as parents' responsibility to keep their kids safe. At the same time, with things like cable television, you could block certain stations to prevent your kids from watching them.

People did talk about themselves. People had websites about themselves and their likes, they wrote about their day on Livejournal or reviews movies they liked on whatever website existed for that. They interacted. The difference was that every single thing they did, every single place they went, every financial transaction, was not posted for the world.

ok peri is much more likely to actually do this but its lot to draw ok

more murderbot art

based on this post

At Rocky's 210 *C body temperature, the vapor pressure of water is 19 bars. Luckily his body is supposed to contain large pressure gradients because that's how his muscles work, but I'm not sure if the entire volume of water in his body is in containers that can withstand 19 bars of internal pressure. A human's blood doesn't boil in our blood vessels in a vacuum, but we're at a much lower temperature so the vapor pressure is much lower. I think his coolant loop is at least full of mercury so the pressure wouldn't blow his radiator tubes open? Any internal boiling of water in Rocky's body shouldn't cook his organic tissue since whatever his cells are made of can already withstand those temperatures, but if the barotrauma ruptures his cells he's screwed.

A large pressure vessel at 29 bars and 210 *C has a fucking obscene amount of stored mechanical energy. Suddenly opening that to air is immensely destructive. Rocky's habitat would be over 3x the pressure of a semi truck tire, and also around 3x the pressure of the Byford Diving Bell. When this was accidentally depressurized from 9 bars to 1 bar in an instant, it caused a man standing in the pressurized chamber next to the opening to be smashed through a narrow crescent shape opening so forcefully that he was ripped apart and his internal organs were sent flying, with pieces of him flung up to 10 meters in the air. Rocky's body would become a cannonball, flinging him across the Hail Mary at high speeds, and the expanding ammonia might even create a hazardous shock wave.

1 cubic meter of ammonia at 29 bar and 210 *C expands into about 17 cubic meters of ammonia at 1 bar and 20 *C (not 29 cubic meters because adiabatic expansion cools it down so the T term in PV = nRT decreases. I'm assuming a final temperature of 20 *C after mixing and equalizing in temperature with the air inside the Hail Mary's main habitat). This is not good because it means that there is a gigantic volume of anhydrous ammonia released into the cabin. However, it's actually worse because the Hail Mary is at 0.21 bars. At that pressure, the ammonia would expand by a factor of over 80. Assuming the Hail Mary has a pressurized volume of 500 m^3 (this is half that of the ISS, which is built for six people to live and work in for months at a time, and the Hail Mary is built for 3 people to live and work in for several months), and Rocky's ball has a volume of about 1 m^3, rupturing it would release enough ammonia that if evenly mixed into the ship's entire pressurized volume it would result in an atmosphere of about 14% ammonia (remainder is oxygen). This is very bad for two reasons: first, because breathing more than 0.5% ammonia will kill a human being in minutes. And second, because 14% is very close to the lower explosive limit for ammonia in air, so a mixture of just ammonia and oxygen at that concentration I think may be flammable. The initial temperature of the ammonia might not set it off since it would immediately cool as it expanded, but it is potentially turning the entire goddamn ship into an environment where any source of ignition, such as static electricity, could turn it into a bomb.

Yes. Obviously. He characterizes these fans as self-absorbed, socially deficient, intellectually incurious, emotionally dependent on formula, and “excruciatingly boring.” That is not neutral description. It is a negative judgment about their character and the way they live.

2. Does Ebert imply that a depth of knowledge about a fannish subject is inherently bad on its own?

Not quite. His stated objection is to people using expertise as a display of devotion, a source of status, or a substitute for broader interests and spontaneous social interaction.

I would argue that the rest of the review makes his position a little more clear, though.

3. Does Ebert state that this pattern of behavior is a quality of all fans?

No. He says “a lot of fans,” “extreme fandom,” and “such people.” He is identifying a type of fan, not making a literal universal claim.

4. Did the reader see a mildly critical opinion containing the word ‘fandom’ and immediately succumb to an emotional reaction rather than fully read and engage with the passage?

Calling people socially inept, intellectually empty, self-absorbed, and excruciatingly boring is not “mildly critical.” It is openly contemptuous.

A person can understand the passage perfectly well and still object to it. Disagreement is not evidence of failed reading comprehension, no matter how many condescending bullet points one wraps around the accusation.

5. Did the reader see the words ‘socially inept’ and immediately assume this refers solely to autistic people? Why or why not?

“Socially inept” does not mean “autistic,” and Ebert does not explicitly mention autism.

But the behaviors he associates with social deficiency overlap heavily with stereotypes about autistic people: intense specialist interests, encyclopedic knowledge, reliance on predictable conversational scripts, and difficulty improvising socially.

The word “solely” is doing dishonest work here. The relevant question is not whether the description refers exclusively to autistic people. It is whether Ebert treats traits commonly associated with autistic people as evidence that someone is socially or intellectually defective.

6. Is the job of a cultural critic to ‘let people enjoy things?’

No. Critics are allowed to criticize fandom, fan culture, consumer identity, nostalgia, and the social uses people make of art.

Readers are equally allowed to criticize the critic’s assumptions, generalizations, and contempt. “A critic’s job is not to let people enjoy things” does not mean every hostile remark made by a critic is therefore insightful.

There is also a rather important contextual omission here. Ebert did not write this as a general essay about fandom in the age of twitter, harassment campaigns, shipping discourse, or whatever present-day fandom behavior the quotation is now being aimed at.

He wrote it in his February 4, 2009 review of Fanboys, a road comedy set in 1998. So this is a late-2000s review discussing a particular stereotype of 1990s fandom. The film follows a group of friends who plan to break into Skywalker Ranch so that their terminally ill friend can see The Phantom Menace before he dies. Ebert’s argument is that the movie identifies too closely with its heroes and should have mocked them more. The rest of the review makes his position much less ambiguous. He calls their fandom “an idiotic lifestyle,” describes them as “tragically hurtling into a cultural dead end,” dismisses their knowledge as having “no purpose other than being mastered,” and ends with a joke about their mothers cleaning up after them.