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Salima had thought of Wye as her ally, every bit as offended by the locked-down world of Dorchester Towers as she was. But Wye had been working long hours for Boulangism and its new sister companies. She thought the problem was that Salima didn't want to get into trouble. Salima had been thinking that, too. But that wasn't the problem. The whole rotten business, that was the problem.
this isn't super well written, but the lesson is good: tech workers who aren't yet fully fed up still want to believe that their work is going into something good. what does it take to fully disabuse them of that notion, so that their last tendrils of faith in the legitimacy of their work wither away?
[...] a kid who'd learned to search the darknet for ways to control technology designed to control them. A kid who was outraged at being asked to forget how to do that and go back to being meekly controlled.
Would a kid like that ever work on commission, installing official unlocking codes in the poor-floor apartments of Dorchester Towers? Was there enough money in the world?
And if there was, did she want to be the one who used that money to convince a kid to give up on that uncompromising ferocity?
"[...] I understand your idea here, that you're selling us more freedom. but that's only because our appliances take away so much freedom to begin with, and then sell it back."
"But no one forced you to choose Boulangism. You chose a product that came with restrictions, and in return., you got a deal on your rent."
[...]
Salima managed a tight little smile. "You keep talking about choosing. This is the only place I could get into, and it took months. How is that a choice?"
"You were living somewhere before this place, right?"
"A refugee shelter."
"You could have chosen to stay there, right?"
She wanted these people gone. "I don't think that is much of a choice."
He shook his head. "The point is that you had a choice, and that's because appliances like ours made it economical for landlords to build subsidy units."
[...]
"We want to help you people, let you get more out of your lives, give you more choices."
What about the choice to jailbreak my things? She didn't ask it.
the classic legitimation strategy: create the conditions where people have no choice but to "choose" your product, and you can justify any shitty deal by reminding them that they "chose" your product (see also: Uber drivers)
and lol @ the idea that something needs to be "economical" (through generating extra revenue streams ... ie kickbacks) for private landlords to build and lease cheaper units. what a fantastic argument for public housing
"You're also not white. You ever hear those heritage-not-hate types, that myth that the Irish were the first slaves in America? They're an interesting bunch. They're so close, you know, so close to understanding that whiteness is a thing that other people choose for you. People are white if whiteness is endowed by them by the wider whiteness. It starts before birth and carries on after you're dead. And what whiteness gives you, it can take away. You don't understand that, I bet, but you are only white by courtesy, Mr. Eagle, and you are really only a little green man clothed in whiteness. You won't believe how quickly you can be dewhitened. You're the original illegal alien."
[...] Bruce was one of the richest men who'd ever lived, a contractor on both the white and black sides of the Pentagon's budget, with clearances to match the Joint Chiefs. He owned his own covert armor, and an overt armory, and corporations he had majority stakes in provided intelligence contracting to the entire roster of federal espionage and policing agencies, not to mention most major metros' police forces. He almost certainly got a paycheck every time the cops in Staten Island were advised by a machine-learning algorithm to go to the brown side of the Mason-Dixon line and starting making Black people turn out their pockets and drop their pants.
hell yeah i love this. let's all critique batman pls
[...] The Eagle called several of his State Department contacts that night, hoping one of them would find a channel to the prosecutors on Robinson's case. It pained him to do it, because he wanted the system to just be right, not to make an exception. [...]
you and me both brother
"[...] All the data they feed this system to predict crime comes from the cops, who are assumed to have some kind of bias, first because they're human and all humans have bias, and second because NYPD has a long history of getting caught in racial discrimination, which is why they're buying this stuff in the first place.
"Because cops only find crime where they look for it. If you make every Black person you see turn out their pockets, you will find every knife and every dime-baggie that any Black person carries, but that doesn't tell you anything about whether Black people are especially prone to carrying knives or drugs, especially when cops make quota by carrying around a little something to plant if need be.
Lois Lane on predictive policing, lol. this is the kind of fanfic i want in my life
otoh, i wonder how much scope there is for an intelligent, well-intentioned engineer to correct for biases in the system. direct cops towards more white neighborhoods? steer cops away from neighborhoods that are traditionally over-policed, and report abuses automatically?
[...] "If I could explain one thing to the American Eagle, it would be that: he should be hanging city officials by their ankles out of their office windows until they can explain how this fucked-up, ridiculous situation came to pass on their watch. Then he can move on to the police union. Then the software developers. I understand how a guy like that can end up feeling like he's just tinkering in the margins of the problem and wants to draw a line in the sand, but drawing it in front of Wilbur Robinson is a no-win situation."
Lois Lane again. the real hero tbh
"For that son-of-a-bitch to be doing what he's doing, there have to be a lot of people in on it: the DA, the judge, his commanding officer, the other cops in the cruiser with him. Bianchi isn't any rotten apple, he's a prototype, Mr. Eagle, the very model of a modern major bushwhacker, and you can tell because very time he did it, he got promoted. He's how things are supposed to work, so you'll forgive me if I'm just not all that interested in how you feel about the injustice of seeing me lying out on the ground while Sergeant Bianchi and his pals beat me nearly to death for no reason at all."
Wilbur Robinson
Watching these devices get wheeled into position for use on New Yorkers did something to the American Eagle [...] He'd seen New Yorkers scared, brave, defiant, beaten, noble, and cowardly, and he'd never once wondered which side he was on. Now he had to choose a side between New York and New Yorkers.
during the riot, when the city is about to use violence on civilians