The Breaking Time

The Rundown: DADT, monopolies, copper thieves (and anime)

Police arrest Iraq war veteran Rob Smith during protests at the White House against the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy Nov. 15. Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP

* “We have a gay guy [in the unit]. He’s big, he’s mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay.” 

That one quote, from an anonymous special ops soldier interviewed as part of the Pentagon's comprehensive report on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, sums up the absurdity of the whole matter in the most succinct way possible. Interestingly, the rank-and-file of the military doesn't see any problem with allowing gay and lesbian soldiers to serve openly. Funny how dealing with life or death situations tends to reveal how utterly stupid and irrelevant bigotry is. Hopefully this is DADT's nail in the coffin, and gay and lesbian soldiers will soon be able to serve openly, without bullshit.

* European Commission opens anti-trust investigation against Google European regulators seem ready to rake Google over the alleged prejudicial nature of its algorithms, ad programs and data. I'm not shocked, at all, and in the grand scheme of things, this sort of response is long overdue. 

Awhile back, I wrote about Nation vs. Corporation, and how Big Tech would likely be the next target, as the gleam of its "we'll bring you the future" message wears off, with governments and populations wanting its sudden power to be reined in. We'll see how it goes.

* AT&T offering bounties for copper thieves In Atlanta, AT&T is offering $3,000 rewards for information leading to the capture of thieves that are scavenging telephone lines for the valuable metal, as one of their recent heists left thousands without telephone service.

This is the latest evolution of an ongoing problem. Copper thieves have been a problem for years, especially in areas where the poverty rate is high. Hardware stores like Lowe's frequently hire extra security to protect from such theft.

As cultures have become more tech-based, the resources that technology guzzles become more and more valuable. Inevitably, that demand leads to such materials fetching a pretty penny, especially with growing economic insecurity. The black market ends up savaging one part of infrastructure to sell to another and I don't think bounties alone will overcome that.

* Every anime intro ever. Really. Try not to have a seizure:

Cables and gates

Wikileaks' latest document dump is over a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables, some reaching all the way back to the 1970s. Needles to say, this has provoked some fierce debate and may actually have serious diplomatic consequences.

To be honest, I haven't found any of the revelations (so far) actually shocking. It's been clear for sometime that the U.S. is involved in low-level combat in Yemen. Trying to protect CIA operatives from arrest for wrongful kidnapping is sleazy and wrong, but bullshit like that's been going on since the Cold War. Yes, shockingly, aristocratic tyrants in the Middle East present one face to their people and another to their inner circle. Oh, and turns out U.S. diplomats severely over-estimated their ability to handle the 1979 Iranian revolution. Who knew?

Some of the cables are even reassuring. While wikileaks has successfully dubbed the release "cablegate," implying a whif of scandal, look at some of the initiatives uncovered: U.S. diplomats are trying to stem the flow of weapons to Hezbollah, empty Guantanamo, curb Afghani government corruption, convince Pakistan to scale back its nuclear arsenal and prevent Iran from going nuclear while simultaneously resisting Israeli and Arab leaders' calls for a calamitous war. How terrible.

Just judging from the reaction online and among those I know personally, many of whom are generally sympathetic to wikileaks, this particular volley has attracted probably the most ambivalent reaction yet. Wikileaks' previous dispatches had better justification: revealing attacks on journalists in warzones or exposing how an amok obsession with secrecy is used to obscure even basic details of military operations.

All the same, look at some of the more worthy diplomatic initiatives in the list above, especially those (like the negotiations with Pakistan), that are probably now DOA due to this document dump. For all that the government's botched over the years, I can't help but cringe a bit at endangering the work that's actually constructive. One can be an advocate of openness and still see the need for some information (say, sensitive diplomatic negotiations) to have some level of confidentiality, especially while a deal is still being negotiated.

I also can't help but getting the sense that the shotgun blast approach is less about a screaming need for this information to be public as much as it is a "fuck you" to the U.S. government. Wikileaks, like the nations recorded in these diplomatic cables, is out to protect its own turf and hit its enemies, perhaps more than it would like to admit. It's probably for the best that its next target will be banks, where the battle lines are a little more clear.

This is also where "cablegate" gets really interesting, in the Breaking Time sense. The content is nothing explosive by itself, but the implications certainly are. A major diplomatic bombshell was just caused by a loose, stateless network of hackers and informants. This is possible because the base of secret information grew so bloated, the technology so advanced and the culture so adversarily cynical that a freaking Army private had access to enough material for four serious breaches, along with whatever else Julian Assange has tucked away for insurance.

Secret diplomatic communiques between governments is a pillar of the current nation-state framework. A boring but big, really important pillar going back to the Treaty of F'ing Westphalia in 1648. It is as basic a plank as there is. 

If groups like wikileaks can shake that, repeatedly, then something big just broke, and it won't just damage the ability of states to strongarm others behind closed doors. The treaties and accords that many idealists look to for peaceful international improvement will also suffer a major blow if those negotiations can be breached. Explosions aren't surgical, and it's very possible for the useful and good to take as much damage as the oppressive and wrong.

I've written here before (after the last wikileaks dump) about how transparency is an ammo dump, but it's worth noting that it works best when that ammunition serves an overall purpose: to insure consequences for those who breach some sort of established trust. What's the purpose here? Wikileaks has certainly mastered the art of disrupting the current set-up, but they, nor anyone else, seem to really know what the new rules are.

P.S.- On the bright side, revealing the cables is incidentally a big blow to a conspirational view of world politics. The aggregated stories offer a compelling counterpoint, showing how competing interests, failure, grudges, and personal quirks form the mish-mash that is the international power structure.

Stranger Than Fiction: superheroes in Seattle

"Phoenix Jones," (the Guardian of Seattle, natch) part of the Rain City Superhero Movement, poses with an unidentified (and seemingly quite mystified) police officer. Photo via SeattlePI

I chose the main title of this post for a reason. There are some events you can simply, absolutely, not make up. For example, Seattle is currently plagued/beset/graced by its own superhero movement. Via an interesting article from Seattle PI:

Vigilante justice has come to Seattle, and the caped crusaders drive a Kia.

Seattle police say a group of self-described superheroes have been patrolling the streets at night trying to save people from crime. They call themselves the Rain City Superhero Movement and say they're part of a nationwide movement of real-life crime fighters.

The national website -- cited in a police bulletin sent to Seattle officers Wednesday -- states "a Real Life Superhero is whoever chooses to embody the values presented in super heroic comic books, not only by donning a mask/costume, but also performing good deeds for the communitarian place whom he inhabits."

Police say the "costume-wearing complainants" are lucky they haven't been hurt.

In one instance, police say a caped crusader dressed in black was nearly shot when he came running out of a dark park. In another case, a witness on Capitol Hill saw the crusaders wearing ski masks in a car parked at a Shell station and thought they were going to rob the place.

Police got the license plate and found those masked characters drove a Kia Fate registered to one of the character's godmothers, department staff said. She told police her godson goes around doing good deeds.

It gets even better, as the superhero "movement" (blame my poli-sci background, but they've got to get a little bigger before they've earned the title) seems to combine laudable things like a desire to do good in one's area and forge your own identity with a large dose of delusional batshit and old-fashioned subcultural sniping:

Investigators identified nine people dressed in costume going around Seattle after dark. A police source said the characters go by Thorn, Buster Doe, Green Reaper, Gemini, No Name, Catastrophe, Thunder 88, Penelope and Phoenix Jones the Guardian of Seattle.

But don't listen to Captain Ozone or Knight Owl, police were told. They're apparently not part of the group.

Yeah, fuck those posers.

Police say another incident with the self-proclaimed superheroes came about 3 a.m. Nov. 4 at Sixth Avenue and South King Street in the International District.

Police responded to a harassment complaint and found Phoenix the Guardian of Seattle dressed in a "black colored Batman costume and a black ski mask," department spokesman Jeff Kappel said.

He was standing with four other men and one woman, all in costume with their faces covered by ski masks and bandanas. They were dealing a man making threatening statements and swinging a golf club.

Police took the golf club as evidence. The "costume-wearing complainants" refused to press charges because they didn't want to identify themselves to officers, Kappel said. So the suspect walked.

Wow. Hell of a dipshit move there.

Honestly, I'm surprised this didn't happen before. Superheroes have been a cultural concept for the better part of a century and, after awhile, people in search of something truly different start to do really strange and/or awesome things based on those concepts. Naturally, this tends to result in some insanity along with innovation and costume-bedecked violence is certainly nothing new in society. It's hard not to see that in the superhero statement that ends the article: "You can inspire people to believe they can CREATE themselves a symbol and embody it --- and it's not a lie." There is something there, at least in the ideal.

The problem, however, is the execution. Inherent in the superhero mythos is the "super" part of the equation. Even if the superhero movement's people are, as Phoenix Jones (the Guardian of Seattle!) claims, all MMA and ex-military badasses, they're not Bruce Wayne. Or Superman. Or Black Canary. No one is. This ain't the damn comics and even those who walk out of a serious fight on the winning side tend to be pretty badly injured.

As it is now, it doesn't seem like Seattle's costumed crime-fighters can keep one golf-club wielding maniac from walking. One street gang set, who lack costumes, ballistic cups or aliases but often have a willingness to use guns and numbers, would probably finish them pretty easily. Alternatively the police (also big on guns and numbers, for a reason) could just arrest them if they become too much of a nuisance. A Kia will not outrun a patrol car.

Prediction: if this continues, it's only a matter of time before one of these superheroes ends up in the hospital, jail or the morgue. Or they could become more practical, dial back the costumes, find a money source, seek strength in numbers and just become a regular old gang. If you think I'm kidding, look at the origins of urban neighborhood gangs or the Tongs. It's a surprisingly slippery slope from vigilante community protectors to straight-out organized crime.

Look at it this way, though: for decades numerous comic writers have wondered what would happen if superheroes existed in the real world. They may just get their answer.

Phone breaks

The Metro does not approve

Something interesting happened the other night. Out for a low-key evening with a good friend, we were enjoying drinks when, during a lull in conversation, I heard the text message sound. Making a quick, polite apology, as I saw it was from a family member at an unusual hour, I checked it. She proceeded to do the same with her own phone. After about a minute, the phones went away and conversation continued without a hitch.

No one was offended, and later it occurred to me that I'd seen this process before: there's a socially convenient opening for someone to check their phone, and everyone else in the gathering then does the same. It had amused me as an example of human crowd behavior on a micro-scale.

But it's also an adaptation. Something new and useful comes in — in this case technology that leaves people connected even when out of their homes — that collides with some existing thing people also find important. In this case, that's the need for relatively undivided attention during social time, backed by a widespread perception that intrusions upon that are impolite.

For awhile, the collision is uncomfortable, because the existing social rules don't really have any way to accommodate the new intrusion. While scolding diatribes heralding a new era of vulgarity are inevitable when this sort of collision happens, the new development's here to stay, for the very reason it became an intrusion in the first place: it's useful to enough to become widespread.

This state of flux will often result in some fairly rude bullshit and some angry (even appropriate) backlash, like in the following situation:

So what happens? As with the phone breaks, after much awkwardness, arguments and occasional phone smashing, the rules shift to accommodate. After awhile, social circles develop something like the phone breaks I just described, accepting a greater deal of connectivity than before with some preservation of existing etiquette (i.e. not just any call/SMS is worth breaking conversation for, an "excuse me" is expected). The solutions spread or people end up coming up with largely similar ones on their own. There will still be environments, like movie theaters, where using the new inventions is perceived as completely unacceptable.

This is one reason why I'm often loath to believe statements like Google is making us stupid or cellphones are destroying all politeness. Social fabrics tend to be pretty damn resilient over the long run, and instead of widespread cultural destruction, what usually happens is some broadly acceptable compromise.

Cultures experience some very real, radical changes and the fact that there are a multitude of new devices and shakeups assailing us at once is one of the reasons for this blog's title, but small things like this remind me of how adaptive humans are, and often in the right direction.

"If you can't fix it, you don't own it"

I'm usually not a huge fan of anything bearing the word "manifesto," even when I might agree with its principles, but this absolutely wonderful declaration from ifixit deserves a look. The accompanying blog post details how some companies actually go to pretty drastic lengths to keep repair information from people, and to encourage turnover of devices by some disgustingly intrusive means.

That's bullshit. You buy something, you should have the right to modify or tinker with it as you please. Any longtime reader of this blog knows that I'm a big fan of reliability over flash, and the ability to easily fix something is an important part of that. Repair — in everything from cars to clothing —is an important way to keep what we like longer, make technology more accessible to the non-wealthy and apply human ingenuity to our artifice.

I'll admit that, personally, I'm not naturally that technically talented. By practice and necessity, I've picked up some tricks over the years. I can generally do basic troubleshooting and repair, along with occasional tinkering if I've a) got the time b) am reasonably confident I won't cause an explosion.

Still, the wonderful thing about being a human, knowing other humans, is that we're social creatures and don't need to be an expert in every skill under the sun. I will gladly barter with friends that are to get a needed repair done, especially if they can teach me something new in the process. This is one reason "to choose our own repair technician" and a number of the other rights are important even for those of us who aren't necessarily home mechanics.

On that note too, "easy to repair/tinker with" should become something generally expected of new devices, and rewarded accordingly.

Vote

I'm in the middle of election coverage, so I'll keep this short and brutal.

Get off your ass and vote.

I don't want to hear any excuses. I don't want to hear any tortured rationales about disillusionment or the exclusion of the mainstream or how withholding your vote deprives the system of legitimacy. It does nothing except prove that people are very capable of developing elaborate reasons for doing nothing.

I'll ditch, for the moment, my usual grumbling about how voting is the bare minimum, and that a whole range of other political activities are necessary to make a better world.

Leave aside for a moment all the grandeur or optimistic paeans about its overall importance or your democratic rights. There's truth there, but I can see why anyone who's been hit in the face by the corrupt or sadistic can growl "bullshit" at it, so I won't try to shove sunshine down your throat.

In the end, all voting involves is this: You decide which available candidates will at least not make things worse. If you're lucky, some might even be an improvement. You wait in line, probably not for long. You take a pen and fill out some circles on a piece of paper beside the names of the in-your-opinion-sometimes-better-but-often-least-worse people. You get a sticker.

That's it.

Not exactly much of a trial, is it? Especially as the alternative — sitting on your ass — while less strenuous, accomplishes absolutely nothing. If you're unsatisfied with all your current political options and are working to change the overall way the whole mess works, fine, I wish you the best and you can get back to that after voting. It's not like it's horrendously time consuming.

But if you can't put forward that extremely minimal effort — a few pen marks on paper — then what good are you?