domain:inv.nadeko.net
There are basically 3-5 types of players of note. The government, large stack tech providers, and data brokers are the most distinct and relevant ones.
The government is extremely capable but also doesn’t usually bother to assemble its data into a full-you, longitudinal picture unless it’s motivated to do so. Theoretically that requires a warrant or a high degree of suspicion but in practice it just requires a casual interest. I think regular citizens worry far too much about this and powerful citizens worry far too little about it.
There are only about 3 players in tech with large “stacks”. Google, Meta, and Amazon/AWS. Second tier players in terms of exposure or will to track include Apple, ByteDance, and Microsoft. Any other tech company relevant for an American only matters insofar as they integrate their stuff with the final group…
The “data brokers”. These guys assemble pictures of you based on what dregs they can buy from bigger players, smaller but more comprehensive deals with single or more focused services, and occasionally supplement with data leaks even if such is technically illegal I’m pretty sure they still do.
It’s important to keep these 4 groups distinguished (there’s a major gap between the top tier of tech and the second tier). The answers and usage of the data differ a lot. To some extent the top tier hold back from their full theoretical power.
I will add that there is probably a fifth group of relevance: ISPs and cell providers. These groups are theoretically high exposure but held back due to regulation or fear of lawsuits. The government teams up with them again in cases of suspicion but otherwise doesn’t usually bother. (Banks might count as a sixth group but AFAIK they are super regulated about what they do so don’t matter)
I’d say that the exact words and recordings usually aren’t a major worry. It receives too much attention if you ask me. Your location is far from granular but big picture is likely very knowable even by smaller players. The data brokers are a bit inconsistent but potentially the biggest store of info and also the least regulated. However that inconsistency also works somewhat in your “favor” as the knowledge they get is by nature very inconsistent. You’d be surprised at how hoarding some companies are about their own data and how reluctant the biggest players are to share the Crown Jewels even if they only sorta use it themselves. Your web activity is pretty patchy because the tech evolves so fast and there’s a major wax and waning of exposure. Sometimes they can track a ton and sometimes the noise is strong and it’s hard to assemble patches of data with reliability.
And again each of the 4 nongovernmental groups get different slices of the data so unless you’re asking specifically about the top tier it really depends.
quiet_NaN
21hr ago
People are still going to call them pedos.
Then people are wrong. I discussed this before.
Let me put it more plainly and provocatively. The problem with calling a 50yo who fucks a 16yo teen in a clearly coercive setting "pedophile" is that you are equating something which is deeply morally objectionable with something which is fine.
In case there is any doubt about which is which, yes, I am claiming that there is nothing morally wrong with being a pedophile, in the technically sense of the word.
Now obviously, it is a sexual orientation which sucks greatly for anyone with a remotely working moral compass (and will lead to behavior which is very wrong for those without one), and I thank my maker that I am into women with tits instead so I have access to ethically produced porn and ethical opportunities to have sex (even if being bi would be strictly preferable in that regard).
Sure, there is a large overlap between child-fuckers and pedophiles, but my problem is with child-fuckers as child-fuckers. If some asshole decides to sexually abuse a kid, I don't give a rats ass if they were into kids or watching MILF porn at the same time to keep aroused, they should go to prison either way.
Using pedos as a synonym for child abusers is bad. Expanding it to include creepy sex pest-ry targeting underage victims is even worse. I also do not think that the general vibe of "your sexual orientation makes you the likeliest group to be deported to death camps without anyone else saying a word in your defense" is actually very effective at keeping ethical pedos (who are not complicit in sexual abuse) ethical, probably a society which was meh about ethical pedos but very much against child abusers (which mostly describes western legal systems) would offer a better gradient.
I am not much of a linguistic prescriptionist, normally. I use to beg the question correctly, but it is not a hill I am willing to die on. Still, words matter, and I think that on this forum we should strive to use accurate terminology even if 85% of the general population is using it in a more diffuse manner, especially if it involves emotionally charged words which are intentionally repurposed for clear political goals.
As another example (without a strict 1:1 correspondence), consider a (perhaps hypothetical) attempt to redefine "rape" as "any sex act perpetrated by a man which involved a woman who either did not consent or regretted consenting subsequently". (It is not entirely divorced from common usage, people have sex under the influence of voluntarily consumed drugs which would inhibit their legal ability to consent all the time, and end up in situations where they can decide on the next day that they were raped (and then decide to report it or not) or retroactively grant consent. (Perhaps not legally, but practically. Legally, "last night when I was dead drunk, I urged my hot husband to fuck my brains out and he did" might still be rape, but unless she bring that up in divorce proceedings eventually, nobody cares.)) Still, I would definitely argue against anyone here who would try to push such a new definition, because it hopelessly muddies the water by using the same term for different things which are not remotely morally equivalent.
ControlsFreak
21hr ago
There is significant interpretive difference between individual rights recognized in the Bill of Rights, due to the background of natural/retained rights tradition, as compared to enumerated, limited powers of government. In fact, much jurisprudence actually roots rights WRT television in the free speech clause. Whether or not that is accurate, and whether there should be more of a revival of the free press clause, is above my pay grade (though I have thoughts). But the entire interpretive framework is significantly different from the first step.
The founders did seem to think that there was a meaningful difference between Armies and Navies, naming them separately rather than some unified term and including entirely separate clauses addressing particulars of each. I also agree that if we called the Navy the Floating Army, it probably wouldn't turn the Navy into an Army for purposes of the Constitution. So, I guess my first question is... is the Air Force a Flying Army or a Flying Navy? Because I'm not sure which Constitutional clauses apply to it.
Those girls are damaged and they have already been steeped in a way of life that makes them cynical, mercenary, and not well suited for stable monogamous relationships. I am not even condemning them for it; it's a survival strategy for desperately poor women who have few other options.
I’m afraid I have to second this. I had a friend who married such a girl in another Asian country. He believed that she had retired and that since he was now providing for her she would not be tempted back into old habits that she clearly disliked.
It was not so. The habits of decades don’t fade so easily - she chafed at the lack of power she had as the demure receiver of her husband’s money and returned to prostitution behind his back to fund a secret drug habit and (I suspect) to get back some agency in her life. Then he lost his job and things blew up completely.
Have to agree with your conclusions, although I come at it from nearly the opposite valence. I want to own my phone on the hardware level, and NOT have it spying on me unless I choose to transmit certain info out.
I have all the extra Samsung AI features disabled on mine, and have yet to hear a single reason to turn them on.
If it is going to be spying on everything, it damn well better be able to figure out how to be a good little servant and satisfy my actual preferences.
This has been my ongoing annoyance with targeted advertising. I should never, ever be exposed to a digital ad that isn't at least somewhat enticing to me, or at least feels relevant to my interests. Yet 99% of the time, I'm simply nonplussed by the offerings that actual get served. Oh, I can see that they're taking educated guesses, they're not completely winging it, but whatever 'consumer profile' or equivalent they've got of me is laughably off base. I could see a me that was shorter on willpower and maybe 15-20 IQ points lower might be engaged with it.
Full disclosure though, I've also used the Firefox browser the entire time I've been on the internet, and I adblock every website by default, so it is just possible they can't get a good read on me.
After decades of data gathering, they aren't any better at predicting my preferences DESPITE ME BEING VERY CONSCIENTIOUS when feeding my preferences to them!
My end thought is "Look guys, if you want my hard-earned money you have to at least display things that are genuinely appealing at a price point I would be willing to consider. Otherwise, maybe leave me be." I can figure out what I want and how to buy it just fine on my own!
And that's kind of the meta-issue with AI products and their integration. "If you want me to opt-in to your digital surveillance panopticon, SHOW ME HOW IT WILL IMPROVE MY LIFE FROM BASELINE, I don't want parlor tricks and corporate marketing jargon, I want tangible improvements in the metrics that I care about with regards to my life quality. If you can't figure out how to do that, I literally do not trust you to run this system wisely."
EDIT: Although, I am waiting in trepidation/excitement for the day I log into one of my accounts and have a conversation with the AI and it becomes clear that the robot has me 100% pegged, it knows precisely what I want and it can offer a plausible plan on how to get those things/give them to me, and demonstrated capacity to assist in that goal. Then, I like to think that I'll have the willpower to put it down and think things over, and try to maintain enough sense of self that I do not just immediately empty my wallet and tell it to do whatever it takes to make my dreams come true.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
21hr ago
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, by Rashid Khalidi.
Unapologetic Palestinian perspective. Khalidi is highly educated and Westernized, so occasionally makes some obligatory noises about how terrorism is bad and it's unfortunate that Israeli civilians have been killed, but this is pretty clearly performative throat-clearing before getting into how everything is always Israel's fault (or the US's). That said, makes a good case for where Israel has gone wrong (and admits some of the areas where the Palestinians have). It won't change any minds but if you want the best-articulated Palestinian perspective you can get without academic faffing about "subaltern identities" and "Zionist colonial-settler projects" (e.g., Nur Masalha and Edward Said) this is probably it.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
21hr ago
Texans and Coloradans are annoyed by the influx of Commiefornians, is there a part of the country that actually likes its neighbors? Haha
MollieTheMare
21hr ago
I’m finally on ‘The Far Side of the World’
Give you joy on reaching the antipodal point on your circumnavigation of the series. I think The Far Side of the World is where O'Brian was at the height of his powers. The five novel sequence from The Thirteen-Gun Salute through the The Commodore is where I most like to get lost in though. One just flows into the the next.
junkie Maturin
To be fair to Maturin its clear he deals with chronic pain from his
It's quite clear his physical recovery was very slow from the bowling-green scene in The Commodore.
Even though the film could never live up to the novels, I have mixed feelings about a sequel. I think they still did a beautiful job, especially with the sound stage. I wish we could have had more of at least the same quality, but I'm afraid that any sequel moves would be a shameless cash grab at far lower quality.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
21hr ago
Don't we all regard those examples as moral failures though?
I've yet to see anybody seriously take the position that grooming gangs were okay, I've only seen shameful denial.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
Propane runs fine in a system designed for R-12. The issue with it is flammability.
While propane's flammability makes repairing systems using it more dangerous, it doesn't make much difference in running the system. It's a significantly better refrigerant than r-134a(the main thing it's replacing now) or r-410a(which, along with 404, it's likely to displace a lot of in the coming years) but a slightly worse one with similar drawbacks to r22(which has been banned/in phaseout for a while).
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
22hr ago
Rather, that we are not living up to much of our ideals.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
22hr ago
the fact that all movements have leaders makes those leaders by definition "elevated factions" renders the possibility of an "uprising of the masses" defnitionally impossible
This is correct. Masses are categorically incapable of mounting any deliberate action. All they can muster is panic and senseless violence. Any direction is given by leadership, which is incompatible with being a mass.
The elite do not enforce their will by their own hand; that is done by the security state, whose ranks are filled from the very masses whose necks they are stepping on
The necks of the baton wielders are not stepped on, or at least not enough as to make them ineffective. When that happens, they tend to turn the batons against their commanders in military coups, and become new elites; or break ranks and fail to defend their commanders against competitors.
No amount of in-group cohesion will save the ruling elite if [...] incompetence erodes the security apparatus' faith in the elite.
What you are describing is quite exactly the higher level of in-group cohesion of a counter-elite producing a circulation.
A gang of colonels decides they trust each other more than their commanders, and performs a military coup. A common story.
But a more common if less dramatic story is that the colonel is the friend of the general is the friend of the politician and that they all have more to lose by breaking ranks, so they all agree to preserve the system and keep their mouths shut.
I don't think that's true Bah on either account and I'm glad you posted it, I think many people here would deliver the same advice and tough love to a friend of theirs.
Have you ever had a friend who is smitten with someone and not thinking clearly? Every post I've seen in this thread comes off to me as people who are trying to knock a friend out of their lovestruck perception of reality. Some of them are a bit harsh, but mostly in response to you fighting being knocked out of this lovestruck state.
What would you tell a friend if they came to you with a question, "Hey, so I may have impregnated a single-mother Philippine prostitute I picked up at a strip-club and I'm thinking about moving there and starting a family with her"?
What would you say to your friend if you think the above decision was a really bad decision? Your responses in thread come off that you kinda want this fantasy to be true and that you found love and a family. If you choose not to do the above, I think you should spend a lot of your effort to find a woman in the US and start an American family. Something is clearly missing from your life you really desire and I want you to satisfy it, just not in a way which I think will lead you to disaster.
TowardsPanna
22hr ago
How difficult would it be to set up a company that actually buys the data on either a major country, anonymized, or specific smaller groups or individuals, not anonymized? What are the rules for who they are allowed to sell to, and in what form?
I don't necessarily believe this to be the case, but an amusing thought: What if the feminist hoe-maddening over IQ is not because they believe such a concept could be used to incorrectly characterize men as smarter than women, but because they already do (at least subconsciously) believe men are smarter than women. And where IQ research, or the IQ concept, is only further pouring fuel on the fire in legitimizing this belief and spreading awareness of it.
Three potential non-mutually exclusive drivers come to mind that could lead to the female belief that men are smarter than women:
- Lived ExperienceTM. Women—with their allegedly greater Empathy, Social Intelligence, and Emotional Intelligence that they love gassing themselves up about—have cultivated a sense of the Hanania-pill (posted below by @FtttG) through their lifetimes of interacting with men and women.
- A mild case of the Apex Fallacy. If when considering the distribution of men in some trait, women automatically focus on some top quantile of men. If one only mentally compares some top quantile of men against the same quantile of women in IQ—in the presence of greater male variability—one could conclude that men are smarter than women.
- A less mild case of the Apex Fallacy. Similar to 2), but greater male variability is no longer a necessary condition. If one only mentally compares some top quantile of men against a less restrictive quantile of women (such as women as a whole) in IQ, one could conclude that men are smarter than women.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
My impression is that Epstein's clients were not particularly requesting for underage, that was Epstein himself, and that he deliberately recruited teenaged girls who were vulnerable because they did not have great lives with bright futures ahead. 100% of these girls understood when getting on the plane that 'I need you to work a high end party' meant 'have sex with the guests'- especially because my impression is that, like most pimps, Epstein himself was having sex with them.
It seems likely to me that many of Epstein's guests were getting off on the taboo aspect of having sex with minors. I doubt that 'power differentials' are a big part of the explanation for the simple reason that his guests already have a very high power differential compared to the vast majority of possible partners. Epstein wasn't offering anything special enough there to make committing crimes appealing.
faceh
22hr ago
but I think as you say even if women make equally good or even better (as I think some research suggests) decisions, time is money, faster can be better, and sometimes forcefully imposing decisions on others can also be more effective than we give it credit for.
From an evolutionary standpoint, yeah. Men in a hunting band have to respond a lot quicker to a changing environment than women gathering berries, in general. Slow decisionmaking kills, or lets the prey escape, which is also bad.
So women might have a decent structure for reaching consensus on important matters (do these fruits look ripe? Are these berries poisonous? which section of the forest shall we forage in today?) It will necessarily be more slow and 'sensitive' to feedback from the group members, whereas for men, if the guy leading the hunt screams "GRUG! THROW SPEAR NOW!" better to not talk back and just DO IT.
celluloid_dream
22hr ago
To take this on a slight tangent - at least for phone/tech companies, they're not keeping nearly enough data about me.
I bought a new flagship Samsung phone this year, billed as having all the AI bells and whistles. It was supposed to work magic with its cloud access, integration with all the built-in apps, on-device processing, and smart assist / suggestion features.
What Samsung AI actually does is sit around offering an inferior version of my SOTA-subs (Claude,Gemini,ChatGPT) and I basically never touch any of its features. It's the brand-new-but-already-outdated-car-touchscreen of AI tech. Also, a few times a day it annoys me with an unnecessary pop-up saying "Good afternoon! Here's a random news article based on your location. The current weather is overcast. Have a great day!". I hope to god no inference cycles were wasted generating these turds that wouldn't have passed muster as a feature in 2015, let alone 2025.
I want to be able to sell my soul to the machine. I want it to spy on me every second I use it. I want it to already know that I've been pulling up my topo map every time I have a spare minute, see that I've been looking at such and such an area, know that I usually do hikes of this distance and that elevation gain, and go have a think about that in the background and come back to me with something useful that I would actually want to know, and haven't seen yet - that "there's low cloud forecast for that area on Saturday, just FYI", and "trip report from 2 days ago mentioned an active bear in the area".
and to head off objections, Yes I want it reading my texts. Yes, I want it looking at my photos. Yes, I want it to be my Whispering Earring. "Better for you if you don't hit send on that reply. She'll likely think you're being flippant even though you're being sincere".. and so on.
obviously not with that kind of sharing enabled by default, but it should be available!
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
22hr ago
Dude.
Others have pretty much covered it. This is like textbook Filipina scamming 101. Your post reads like a white guy reading a list of "Dos and Don'ts in the Philippines" and carefully checking off every single Don't. I almost don't believe it's real because it's so on the nose and it's hard to believe anyone is this naive. I don't mean that to be insulting, honestly I don't, but... man.
So realtalk, you sound kind of like you are desperate for this to be real, she really is pregnant with your child and she really does love you. And no one can say that is 100% impossible. Maybe you are the one guy in a hundred (or more) who gets told this story and she's sincere. But do you really want to let yourself get milked on those odds?
Look, even if you did go back, demanded a paternity test, and it turned out to be yours, how does this end? I have known guys who married former bar girls there. It just... doesn't turn out well. Almost never. Those girls are damaged and they have already been steeped in a way of life that makes them cynical, mercenary, and not well suited for stable monogamous relationships. I am not even condemning them for it; it's a survival strategy for desperately poor women who have few other options. You can feel sorry for them, but you have to be realistic about them.
That said, on the remote chance that you really did get her pregnant, and she decides to keep it, and you can verify this, do the right thing and provide for your damn kid.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
22hr ago
I also think there’s something to be said for how large male-dominated orgs have chosen a decision structure or maybe also a leadership structure that suits their strengths. I don’t think it makes sense to make this out to be more powerful than it is, but I think as you say even if women make equally good or even better (as I think some research suggests) decisions, time is money, faster can be better, and sometimes forcefully imposing decisions on others can also be more effective than we give it credit for. It does make me wonder is sociologists could invent a managerial structure that improves performance across several axes. However I think research on this also attracts hucksters and bad science, so it’s hard to tell a legit management consultant (assuming they exist) from a bad one.
BahRamYou
22hr ago
I'm being curt because for me this isn't just shitposting on the internet or idle speculation about something abstract, and I have to actually figure out what to do about it. Most of the replies I've seen are people like you who just want to tell me what a horrible person I am, or others who just googled "philippines scam" as if I'm not aware of the possibility. Believe it or not, I'm not a complete idiot, although I freely admit that I have many personal problems. But dealing with this situation is just more important to me than sparing the feelings of anonymous strangers who are trying to take a dig at me.
Anyway she sent me photos of her at the hospital today, recovering from the abortion. So it wasn't a scam. (yeah yeah I hear you thinking "but what if the hospital photos were also fake!" she's not some expert photo editor or stage magician). Turns out I actually know more about my personal life than random people on the internet.
It was a mistake for me to post this here, I know. People on this site just want to speculate about abstact issues, not deal with anything real.
quiet_NaN
23hr ago
I would argue that Epstein and his guests are different from random truckers in that they purposefully selected for underage. If Epstein had hired 18yo's from escort websites only, this thing would be an absolute non-story, and nobody except a few prudes and feminists would get upset.
Being a sex worker at a truck stop is very likely not a great job. I would expect that the pay is lousy (because your clients do not have a lot of disposable income), it is rather dangerous (because "trucker", unlike "bank executive" does not filter for "intelligent person with an appropriate discounting function who will avoid any homicides they will not get away with") and that the clients are not particularly hot or skilled at sex. If you can make ends meet using OnlyFans or doing escort work, that seems much preferable. So I can totally see that this job selects for 16yo runaways who need to pay for their next meal or their next dose, and have neither the wardrobe nor the age to make it in the more respectable branches of sex work (where underage is likely a hard no, because it attracts the eye of Sauron like little else except murder).
Unlike the US, I have no problem with prostitution per se. I certainly do not think minors should be prostitutes, but also admit that I have no good way to align the incentives of a 16yo drug addict to that end. Still, I think informed consent is as important for sex work as for any sex act.
Some time ago, there was a scandal where some porn company would hire women for what they claimed to be modelling (or something similarly tame), then get into a plane to some other city, and suddenly be confronted with the fact that they would be shooting hardcore porn instead. This put the women in a position where they could either walk out, and find themselves in a city which they knew nothing about without a return ticket home, or they could conform with the expressed opinion of the set crew that shooting porn was not a big deal and believe their lies that their video would only be sold to foreign collectors and not be put on the internet. Eventually, the company got sued and is out of business now, and good riddance. By contrast, no hooker who climbs into a truck is under any illusion that the truck driver is going to do a photo shoot to kick off her modelling career. She might still get raped when the trucker violates the agreed boundaries, but that would then at least be a criminal matter (not that this would buy her anything, realistically).
Now, in theory, it could be that Epstein recruited his victims by driving to local truck stops and telling the sex workers: "I am currently recruiting underage prostitutes for a sex party. Here is a brief detailing transportation, accommodations, sex acts, payment, and safe words. Please read it, think about it for a week and then mail me what sex acts you feel comfortable with and I will get back to you."
However, in my world model, this is exceedingly unlikely. It is seems far more likely that the girls travelling on the Lolita express had at best a vague idea what would be required of them, and then were coerced in pretty much the same way as the victims of that unethical porn company were, except worse, because they were underage and actually trapped on an island.
I base this on my general impression of Epstein's MO wrt consent and also one major thing which I think is appealing in men about young partners, which is sexual inexperience. If you want an eager escort who has a great technique in oral sex, your ideal woman is likely a 25-30yo who has given head a few thousand times in her life and perfected her game, not a 16yo hooker. On priors, I don't think that Epstein specifically recruited virgins for his guests, because most of his guests would not appreciate a woman who curls down on the floor and starts crying when she is told what is expected of her, but I think that the whole setup was pretty much build around maximizing the power difference, his guests were probably into making their victims submit to sex acts which were way out of their comfort zone.
Sloot
23hr ago
Yeah I have that impression too, primarily based on the fact that every progressive woman I have talked about it with in person, upon explaining the iq variance situation, immediately scoffed "Oh so men are smarter than women are they?"
Which is actually funnier than it sounds at first. It suggests either A) a conflation of average and variance, even after an explanation of variance or B) the apex fallacy, where in a discussion on the distributions of men and women in some trait, women automatically jump to focusing on the right side of the distribution for men. Or both A and B. Ironically enough, either would provide mild Bayesian evidence for updating one's priors in favor of men being smarter than women.
stuckinbathroom
23hr ago
The only people getting screwed are
Hmm I can think of at least 2 other people getting screwed…
Congratulations, that's a nice problem to have.
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