94: The Lawnmower Women

death cleaning? Finitely? Really? Yeah, it's like the most metal kind of clean. No. I I had heard about it because it's like I feel like people were talking about it, like around the time that Marie Condo was was blowing up to similar via Justine, Swedish death cleaning is basically like clean your house like you are about to die, because you are get all your documents in one place and throw out all your trinkets and crap. I realized I've been doing this my whole life. I leave my

house each morning assuming I'll never make it back. Thank you, Justine. So there was an article on BuzzFeed about this for a while. I oh, there's a book written by a Swedish woman who says that she is between eighty and a hundred years old, but does not get more specific than that. Umar to Magnussen, there you go. I had not written that down. So I guess the word for death cleaning in Swedish is those saddening. Oh yeah yeah.

And but I thought the most interesting. I mean, first of all, this is a great idea, and I am going to go home and do it, although I hope I don't die. Um. But one of the things I thought was really great about it was that she suggests in the book that you make a throwaway box, which is stuff that is sentimental to you but would not have any meaning for other people. Stuff that's all my stuff. I have a mailbox of just like printed out old

emails from like or something. But I was like, this is a brilliant idea because you're basically giving your surviving family members or whomever permission to look at it. And then Marie Condo would be like, bye, I'm not going to keep this. So um. I have a friend who recently found her deceased family members diaries, and she was like, it's so hard because if he didn't want anyone to read his diaries, he would have destroyed them, right, But then I'm holding the diary and I'm like, do I

open the diary and read the diary? Would be so mad if someone read my diary. So I guess the idea with Swedish death cleaning is to think ask yourself those questions of like do I want someone to read my diary? And if you do, you put it in the throwaway box, and if you don't, you destroy it. That's super smart. That's what are you gonna do with your diaries? Exactly where they are? I I have been thinking about it since I read this thing from my friend.

I don't know. I definitely wouldn't want anyone to read them, but I also feel like I don't want to throw them away until I'm like very close to death, but I won't know probably like when I'm going to die. So I feel like this is why historically have been it's been really hard to motivate to keep a diary for this exact reason, because I'm like, what do I

do with it? It's really I mean, I kept a diary from when I was seven until right around the time I got married, and so I have like all the volumes of my and they're all organized by year and were like thing to have, though I don't like I wouldn't know what to do with it. But at the same time, it's like cool for yourself to be able to go back if there a signal you can give that's like burn the diaries. Now, I think I have to put them in a safe where I can

like press a button and it just explodes inside. I mean, put them in a bear suit. Put them in a bear suit midsummer them. Um. The one good thing about having a diary, though, is then if you have kids, going back and reading my diet the first volume of my diary from when I was my son's age, is so interesting because it's all just like these angry missives about how pissed I am at my parents, and I was like, whoa Like I just hated them, like at times, I mean the times when I wrote in my diary

it was always hating someone. Also, another thing about being an only child, you don't have a sibling who you can just exactly your complaints about mom and dad. That's all. You got to have a sibling so you can be like, man, mom and Dad were being so annoying today and like I was also there read Let's Union. Actually I've never kept a diary, but my brother has like amazing recall of everything that ever happened to us as children, who'll like, tell me if I was at a story he's telling.

I'll be like, I don't think I was there. He'll be like, yes, you where, you did this in this and you ate this. It's also my worst nightmare. I mean, this sounds great, but also I would hate that. I want to be able to like bleach my brain of certain things. I yeah, the whole the Swedish death cleanything.

I mean some of it. I think that some of it is sort of generational where it feels I mean not just like oh I'm thinking about death like in that way, but that like the amount of stuff you've amassed and the quality of that stuff, Like like most of the stuff that would end up in my box is just stuff that represents the majority of my possessions, because I am not yet of the age where I

own very much furniture or anything at all. Like it's all just like junk, like ticket stubs and bracelets from things, and like there's somehow still so much of it. Yeah. Yeah, it's somehow becomes just as burden. Some is like a credenza. Yeah, whenever I move, I'm like, at least I don't have a lot of stuff, and then I'm like, I have so much stuff. It's dumb, little stuff that packs very easily, and yet it's impossible to go through anytime you have

to move. It's yeah, I think we're all trying not to buy clothes right now. Yeah, it's I don't want to accumulate clothes either. I find that, Like, um my mom was in town and she ended up giving me some clothes and they were I ended up liking them a lot when I put them on, but I was kind of looking at them being like, if I had fifty less clothes, then laundry would be so much more simple. I would be able to like fold everything the right way.

But I have such a hard time getting rid of especially clothes, that then when new stuff comes in, I'm just like, I think there's also this minimalist fantasy that people have of like if I only had five things and that's all I needed, But it's actually very hard to live that way. I have that with almost everything except for clothes and sort of a maximalist when it comes to clothes, and I'm very much like, oh, I can't let go of this. I'll put it in a

box and then twenty years I'll love it. Like I have that with with clothes more than I have with other thing. I'm pretty unsentimental about almost everything else. But yeah, I should do some Swedish death cleaning. Now I should all do it. Yeah, it's a real our listener Oscar, who's our Sweden expert, should tell us if Swedish death cleaning is like a thing Swedish people actually do or this is like marketing for American Further, it's like it's

like Swedish people in Japanese people. Um, both get like the oh, it wouldn't it be wonderful to be so clean in Japanese. That's why I like, there's a book about tiny apartments and it's like one of the classic like coffee books or or um like I don't know, little art books. And it's just like these are not the pristine Japanese apartments that I feel like our like New York apartments. It's the idea of like you keep all yourself in a tiny space because you have you

can just walk outside into a city. Yeah, you still again, like however much room there is, it feels like you take up oh yeah, and then you have a murphy bed probably, which then you have to like make every day and then like fast to the wall. I mean I would just never do it, Like, let's be real, I would never do it. Would you guys ever live in a tiny house? I think we've discussed this before. No, I no, no, God, I'd have to have a huge, like I don't know, psychic break or something in order

to live in a tiny house. I don't know how people with kids live in a tiny house. And I've I've read all of these profiles of people who do, and it just sounds so difficult. Even people who are doing it really successfully have to at some point acknowledge the strain it places on your marriage and your kids a lot. I mean, it's just you're acknowledging like this isn't great most of the time. Well, we're going to take an ad break real quick, and when we come back,

we're going to talk about a very haunted doll. Welcome back. We have a quick item that we felt was very nightcall. This comes from a local Houston News site, and they posted a saga last week about a talking Elsa doll from the movie Frozen that is one of the most compelling cases for a doll hunting that I've ever read.

Um This doll, originally when it was bought by the family I think six years ago, spoke some phrases from Frozen in English only, and it's sang let it go when a button on its necklace was pushed, and that is fine. Then after two years it became bilingual and it started being able to speak Spanish and English and sing in both languages, and that that was all that. In a way, that's an improvement, So that's great. Uh. But okay, by the way, this whole time, the batteries

in the stall were never changed. And I can speak from experience that children's toys without a battery change start exhibiting very strange behavior. But this doesn't explain the next thing. So no change in batteries. The doll then started speaking or singing even when she was turned off. So the family went in saying they were like, we need this

thing out of there. They threw it away. Later, I think a couple of weeks later, it appeared in a bench in their living room and they were so freaked out they double bagged it and put it at the bottom of the trash can because they were like, the only explanation is that their kids had gone to the trash and taken else out and put her in the bench. So they put her at the bottom of the trash can then put a bunch of trash on top of her. At that point, she appeared outside their house and their

daughter was like, I found Elsa. She came. So they lost their mind and they've been posting about this on social media and eventually they had to send the doll to a family friend in Minnesota who had agreed to take her in, and he was like, if she starts acting scary and demonic, I'm gonna I'm gonna weld her to a metal pipe and bury her in the woods. And now that's where we are at present day. She's duct taped to their car. Great, because I feel like

we're really getting back to our haunted doll roots. Yet exactly, I was like, this is some original night called doll magic. Let's do it. I mean it speak. The speaking in Spanish just feels like they have like one ship that they make for the doll, and it has the Spanish language version on it too, and it's just a matter

of what it was. Two years later, there were two years there was like an Adbusters thing where people would swap the chips from g I Joe's and talking Barbie because Barbie said things like I hate math, and so there were people who were like swap them, would say that. Barbie would be like, let's go Joe, Let's go to war. This doll feels like it a sentient yeah, I mean, and the moving of the doll like so when you look at the doll too, it's not a particularly animated doll. Like,

it's not a it's not a high tech doll. It's got a big head, it's got it's one of the huge it's like has a kind of brats vibe to it. So it it's not a walking doll. I mean, we've all seen the dolls where it's feet. It's conceivable they might walk. I guess this doll was definitely like flew through the air powered by spirits. There's no question she did not move by any physical means that we can understand. Right, hang on, oh that's her speaking in Spanish. Test your

kids have any talking dolls that scare you. Yes, okay, well, so yes, we have Louvera Vella, who is a very i wouldn't say very realistic, but definitely like approaching Uncanny Valley. Um. She is a newborn baby that kind of like she's always kind of sleepy, but she does cry and giggle and my daughter really enjoys her. But then also my daughter wanted a baby live. Oh I'm so scared of baby alive. Well, this baby Alive is the world's most basic and archaic baby. That's the scary one where it

slurps the cherries up. This is the one that's even more basic than that, where it's a doll, hollow doll with a tube that goes from mouth to butt, and it doesn't it's not animated at all. It has no batteries or anything that's like the original, like the of a baby doll. Okay, I had the baby alive that chewed the cherries and and it seemed to take a long time for her to digest, which is very exciting. Like a lot of suspense. This one, it's just like

my daughter had. You know, she comes with a little toilet and she would just sit her on the toilet and forced feed her. All this pair just come right out. She'd be like, look, she's being again, She's being again, she's through see again. This has to stop. But we had some battery operated things, uh, and in particular like this puzzle that had light sensors and little animals on it where when you remove the animal, it made the

animal noise. But for some reason, the pieces weren't flush, like I guess it had been used too much, so they were kind of loose. So we stored it in the basement and for a long time, like I couldn't figure out what was happening because every so often the light would shift in there, I guess, and you'd hear like I was like, what is down there? And it was the cursed puzzle. But they get glitchy when their

batteries go, the battery operated ones. So we also had a horrible walker type of thing where it would be like ring alang, the animals sang, and she would just go anytime a day turned off, for sure, Wow, let's talk about something else really scary, I was gonna say, speaking of things becoming more and more sentient, Yeah, by degrees, we watched the lawnmower Man for our unnerving c g I January series following Cats and the Abyss. I unfortunately was not able to watch it. So I'm just going

to ask you, guys questions about lawnmower Man. I've been wanting to see this movie forever. It's a great movie to ask questions about. So I Well, the one thing I know about lawnmower Man is is it as one of the like, um, one of the great examples of eighties and nineties adaptations of things that have nothing to do with the source material. Yes, have you guys read the story. I haven't read it, but we both read the synopsis. Have you read it? Mom, I know what

the story is about, which is incredible. Well, let's just say so lawnmower Man came out in this was originally they were going to market it as Stephen King's The lawnmower Man, but King was like, I will sue you into oblivion. Um. The plot of Stephen King's seventy five short story The lawnmower Man is about out this guy who runs like a gardening center and he or I

guess like, he hires a serviceman who the reading. It's just like, okay, he arrives with a lawnmower that mows the lawn by itself, and then the gardener guy crawls around naked behind the mower eating grass. Oh, I thought it was that he ate the grass and that's how he mowed like he was the lawnmower. I think it's kind of both. It's both somehow, I think he's eating the moon. I have to read like the stuff that's

left behind, like they don't bag it. Maybe it's going really fast because machine and human are working as one. Um the serviceman himself is actually a sadder. Is that how you pronounce it? Like a sad sader? Is a

sader or a sadder? Okay, yeah, I think it's a sad pan Pan the goat god pan Ya one half goat and the other half man Um when part get so when like the Parkcats the guy who owns the landscaping service, when Parkat tries to call the police, the mower and its owner ritually kill him as a sacrifice to Pan. Then you have the lawnmower movie, so which has none of this. Studio that made the lamb arm and the movie owned the rights to the title The lawnmower Man and rather than adapt the story. I assume

they also owned the rights to the story. But it's not maybe enough to fill out a whole movie. Well, it sounds like it's just a what if a lawnmower was a man? That's not an exactly a three, I mean a little bit what the lawnmower Man is also about. The Lammer Man is based on the script originally called Cyber God, and it uses a lot of Stephen King tropes. Basically,

it's about a scientist played by Pierce Brosnan wearing hoop earrings. Earrings, yeah, he um is doing experiments, cutting edge experiments that are about cyberspace and about like hooking a human brain up to well, first a monkey brain. He's Dr Laurence Angelo. I have to say this is this is an amazing performance by Pierce Brosn and in that I cannot decide if it's good or bad, or if he's laughing at himself or taking himself completely serious. But he's good because

everyone's taking it seriously. Like it is a little campy, because it's like it's a lot camp it's a fake Stephen King, but it's also like legitimately kind of scary in parts. No, you didn't think so. I mean it's disturbing, it's a very problematic, it's and dated, it's unving. So have you guys ever read Flowers for Algernon? Yes, okay, it's Flowers for Algernon, but with the Internet. So it's like a guy who is developed mentally disabled, who people hire to mow lawns, who is kept by an evil

priest in a little shed. Sure, and the priest trigger warning, the priest has molested this man from the time that he received him when he was five years old, which we only learned later in the movie. So that's a trigger warning and a spoiler alert all rolled into one. Um. But yeah, a lot of the people in the community are very nice to this man. Um played by Jeff Ay and his character's name is Job Smith, which seems unsubtle, to say the least. Subt It has some carry vibes

at times. UM in terms of the evil priest kind of trying to keep Job in a childlike and submissive state. It's a lot of like Stephen King Greatest Hits tropes um blended together. What did the priest have to do with anything? It's just that he's this He's like a guy in a terrible situation who nobody cares about, even the person who's supposed to care about him, which is why he's the perfect human subject for Pierce Brosnan, who's been looking for a human to jack into the proto matrix.

And the way that they originally cross paths is that the monkey cyborg is that his name again, cry Oborg something like that he has somehow gone into escaped and he's entered into Job's shack. So Pierce Brosen and the other scientists show up to get the monkey back, and then they end up like shooting the monkey because the

monkey becomes super violent. It's wearing a helmet. Also, the monkey becomes smarter and smarter and becomes like more smarter than any human and then becomes like unstoppably violent, like tearing people's heads off. Well, because what we discover later is that Pierce Brosen is kind of under the impression that they are trying to find ways to like cure Alzheimer's patients or help intellectually disabled people become like, you know,

really really super smart. And then the people above Pierce Brosnan who are funding his research is the breaking bad guys one of them. Yeah, play the brother. They're like, no, the best use of this technology is to get people to become killing machines so we can send them to war. And that's what happened to the monkey. Very Stephen King. We're making super soldiers. That's what we really Stephen King would have done it so much better, needless to say, So,

what's being jacked into what? At this point, the monkey is being jacked into the human brain or no, No, there's never a monkey human crossover. The monkey was the first test subject. When they kill the monkey, Pierce bros And is like, I've worked so hard on that monkey. And then he's kind of like, huh, what's your deal job, Oh, you're in a bad situation. Sure, hooked up to a computer. It's just like he's jacked into the web. Yeah, okay.

But when they're jacked into the web, you see representations of what that looks and feels like. And they're in those things, those like spinning around things that are in a lot of sid Have you ever been in one of those? I have? I have in Seattle? Did you adult? Yes? It was like a lifelong goal of mine to go into that, like my entire childhood, and then when I finally did, I was like, what else can I do in life? Is the best thing? I was very nauseous.

Yeah that's super Yeah. Um yeah. Not only does this make you dizzy, it also plunges you into late eighties early nineties c g I landscape. It looks like Miami Vice kind of. I mean it just has the like Pasteli kind of neon over the grid that's dark and you're like flying through. Yeah. It's great because it is sort of like those early computer animation things where it's just truly trying to be a psychedelic as humanly possible, not trying to portray anything realistically, just like yeah, what

if you could put a computer on drugs? What would it see? Yeah? Yeah, Well it's like really taking advantage of this new texture that it was like the way that computer animation looks, and just making that its own thing, as opposed to trying to make it imitate reality, which is now all the game is is like just make everything as realistic as possible through c g I, instead of like, look at this new aesthetic we have, isn't that way all I've seen? It's weird. It's really weird.

It's very like Alex Gray, like a X ray of a person, the kind of art that people are like. This is what it feels like to be on d M T. Right. Speaking of that, the most intense scene in this movie, I think, and I'm wondering if you agree, is the virtual reality sex scene. Yeah, the virtual reality sex scene is. Um. So fast forward to Job getting super smart by watching videos at hyper speed, so he's all caught up on smarts. He's also taking like potions

to give him telekinetic tropics. They call it new tropis. Yeah, yeah, which is great. Um, but also you don't know what these new tropics do. They might make you smarter than anyone's ever been. Well, he starts getting headaches because he can read people's minds and he's telling he has to like kinesis. So that's when the lawn mower starts mowing the lawn by itself. But he's also just like he's brooding. Now he's a cyber god. He surpasses humans. Yeah, but

then so he gets also hot during this. He gets super hot, but he still kind of looks like confused, like Jeff Daniels and dumb and dumber. Yeah, but like, you know, I wouldn't. He looks like he's supposed to be amish and whatever. He's hot. Let's let's be real. He gets hot, gets hot positive a second, because I was like, wow, new tropic, Like I don't feel like that was a word that was like that feels like

a very early use of that word. And I'm wondering now because I'm looking at the history of new tropics. It was coined in nineteen seventy two, okay, but like it didn't start being like until the two thousands, didn't really start being used in products and stuff. I think it was more theoretical at that point. Probably at that point they were like, there's this scary, horrible thing. Don't do it. I'm not going to use the tropics. Don't do it. And then forty years later it was like,

let's market this to people. Well the movies about like here's why it would be bad to be a cyber god, and then people were like, okay, but I still want them.

But wait. The scariest scene is when he has this he has sex, virtual reality sex with this woman because he's now hot and he becomes a He's like, I've seen your fantasy and She's like, oh how, and he's like, I read your mind, and then he turns into this super grotesque like beast, looking like half machine half beast, with like a weird tunnel mouth, and he basically eats her in the virtual this I'm looking at like Dr Manhattan like sex, but then it evolves. They're all covered

in like web mucas type. It's so Crazy've seen the Aerosmith video for Amazing, Yeah, it's exactly that. It's like two Dr Manhattan's flying towards each other in space, and then they combine into that too, and they fly with tentacles. Then they once they combine, it's like again they surpass like human sex and turn into a dragonfly. And then she starts getting freaked out and she's like I don't know what the fund is happening, Like let me out

of this thing, and he's like no, he know. Well he was like, he was like I know what you want, and he turns himself into this horrible thing and she's like no, no, no, and then he can't stop it. Whether he's really scary, it's super scary. And then he like when he eats her, she it breaks her brain. Yeah, she she can't function afterwards, She's just she just laughs. She lies on a bed, laughing all the time. So she So they were both in like a virtual space together.

They were both jacked into the same virtual space. Yeah, but it was like her, her puny human brain couldn't handle it and it broke her. And then he starts becoming violent and going out and seeking revenge on all

the people who were assholes to him when insults. Okay, no, no, no. I have the same thought, because I was like, oh, it's in real life he has this persona then in the virtual because he has It's true that in the original, like in the in the beginning of his virtual journey, he's like, I have all this power, I'm super powerful, but in real life he's still pretty tame. And then gradually the too kind of converge and he's taking revenge on all of these people as this like hyper powerful

thing that was basically fabricated from his experiences online. Um, I want to say it a movie you really can't forget. I just remember being scared of the poster for this movie, and I didn't see it till now because that poster made such an impression on me. This is pretty early Internet, at least for like the lay person, Like I feel like, you know, email and maybe just started to become a thing.

Does it feel like handering and cautionary about the Internet in the way that like say, the net does or does it not even there yet? Is it not even thinking about? It feels handering about being able to shoot things out of your brain? It's like carry It is just like Carrie, It's like Harry because it's I think it's the idea of and and like with flowers for Algernon, that you can have this man made improvement to your life and it's scientific, but there's gonna be a downside.

What will the downside be? And and not knowing that, are you willing to take the risk? And in this case, he couldn't really make the decision on his own, it was made for him. You end up feeling like the doctor is also sort of sympathetic character because he didn't know that this was it was going to be given

the things that make him vine. It starts out you're just like he's evil because he's like using these people just because he has to see what happens with the experiments, and then by the end they're like, you know, he's upon for the military industrial complex who are using his curiosity. He feels really bad about what he's done too. It's like what I'm saying, like everybody just started using the Internet out of curiosity and and uh, jen you in

the good natured human instinct. Yeah, I mean this does that? Does it captures that feeling. Test made a really good meme where it was like me on Twitter or it's just like I love to get out here, and it does capture that kind of like sticky feeling of like

time makes no sense in this space. Well, I actually thought that the thing that was most analogous to the Internet was when he was learning, like when he had been given he had been trained with a virtual reality game that was basically like a like fighter jet kind of game, and he did it with this neighborhood kid and nothing nefarious there, even though the way I said it makes it sound that way. But they were both like kind of lying on these platforms and like battling

each other. And then eventually Job got better than the kid, which was meant to show us that he was ready to move on to the next stage. So the next stage was him watching things at a super fast speed, and he was able to retain all of it. And then eventually it got to the point where he's in the car driving around with the kid and they're listening to music and he'll pop a CD in in and it'll play for like ten seconds, then he pops it out and the kids like, don't you want to just

listen to the whole track? And he was like, no, I don't. And I was like, Oh, it's about how when you're getting so much information, almost like you're training yourself, like be smarter, no more, and then everything loses its meaning, everything loses the ability to drive pleasure from it. Everything just tastes like information ruin your your attention span forever.

You do have to be mindful about how much you use the Internet, because it's easy to use it all of the time mindlessly and to be like but there are downsides to that, especially for your mental health. I feel like I just give the clerk speech about cigarettes all the time, but about like Twitter, just like you're paying. I mean you're not paying, but you are paying. You're paying. You're doing something that's harming your mental health because it's

so addictive. Just a decade into it to acknowledge that it's addictive and bad and has a downside, and it's not just fun and like talking to friends in another plane. It also also not like a necessary utility the way that I think a lot of people take it for granted that it must be like I can't do without this because it's just like a part of my life. I can't not have a prime account because I have to buy toilet papers and flowers for Algernon. It's really

sad um. I just read a lot about Flowers for Algernon, which I didn't realize had been published originally as like sci fi, even though it is sci fi. And the Charlie did you ever see Charlie? Yeah, just this idea that like when you you know, when you mess with nature in a way that it doesn't ask for, you're going to get the horns, but he finds a way.

But also the end of Charlie and Followers for Algernon, where you go back to normal, feels like actually like wish fulfillment compared to now, well this felt well, But in flowers are alternon too. It's like the mouse dive, so you don't know if he's going to die too. It's like you fly too high. But really this is a warning against the dangers of telekinesis. It is telegenesis is no good. Also, we promised when we get telekinetic powers, we're all going to use them responsible. Oh for sure,

telekinetic tellings. There's no verb for it. Really, Yeah, tele like a night call. Um. We did, by the way, get a tip about The lawnmower Man. I forget who sent this in. Let me look, um, this is Walrus

Master on Twitter. Please tell me. There was a discussion about how The lawnmower Man was considered almost a religious text by David Koresh, which it was The Washington Post Archives has something from and I quote David Koresh liked The lawnmower Man so much that he showed the film to his branch Davidian followers as an analogy to his own spiritual ascendency. That makes a lot of sense. You can see how this movie would make a strong positive

impact on someone who was very disturbed. I mean that's part of the scary I I now admit, after talking about the scary virtual reality set scene, that there are very terrifying moments. Yeah, and I think what we were saying about using c g I for sort of an artistic purpose in the context of an otherwise live action movie is really effective and people should do it more, using it as a tool instead of just sort of like to create sound stages. More ugly c g I more.

I mean it's not even ugly. That was the thing. I was like, I think I used to think this kind of stuff was ugly because it scared me, But now I was like, it's actually really cool. Well, it's like more, I guess unoptimized c g I. Like all c g I is used as like a technology. Yeah, it's just a technology instead of a medium. Like that's solely how it's being used Now. I feel like, excepting cats, always want to see cats. Also, we're back do this podcast.

Emily will have a take on cats. Everybody else in the universe who's going to see cats will have seen cats at that point. So welcome back tonight called podcast for you Strange Days, Lonely Nights. We have a very special guest today, Emma Cunningham. Welcome Emma. Emma is a human who does stuff with magic and computers and fermentation, and she's also an expert in cybersecurity. If you've been in any of our live shows here in Los Angeles,

you would have been treated to some of her magical talents. Yeah, Emma. Emma is a great magician and also has a lot of really interesting thoughts about tunefoil hats and why we should all be wearing them. That's that's it. That's the thought. We should all be living in one big tinfoil hat. Please tell me more. You mean, like, like, you know, there are like those places where you can go to be uh what's it called. It's like it's like the detox for technology. It was right, It's like safe. It's

like the Todd Haynes movie. Um. Yeah, but that's like a concerts too, and like live shows sometimes where it's like you have to like put your phone in a bag so it won't transmit signal because it's like you have to be present. That's concerts though. That's I've heard done for some concerts, Like I can't remember which ones, but yeah, I've heard it's more like fancy things, you know, high end. I've heard of this also, like high end

sex parties put your phone in the tinfoil bag. So you were just telling us that putting your phone in a tinfoil bag would perhaps actually stop the signals. Is that perhaps true or no? Perhaps I'm more familiar with they're called fair day cages or fair day bags. I'm actually not sure about the tinfoil thing. That's news to me.

And if that works, we should all do it. And I was telling him that I put my key fob for my car in this little bag, but I heard that he could put it in your freezer or in a metal box or even just surrounded with tinfoil and it basically renders your key like only it only works inside the enclosure. So if for a while people were able to hack key fobs, so they could they have like a universal key fob and they could unlock your car. And someone unlocked my car and I was like, this sucks.

What am I going to do? And my dad was like, well, there's like a fifty cent bag that you can buy, and then I got it and I don't use it, but I could. So they would hack it, but they would have to be in proximity to your key fop and then they could cop Is that how it would happen. Yeah, they basically steal the signal. I have no idea technologically

how it works. But it is a way of you go like, yeah, if you're in close proximity, you use this thing and it can hack your key fop and somebody can just be passing by you on the street and get your car virtually steal your car keys. So the net as technology becomes the net um becomes a scary net that takes over everyone's lives. If is like, there have to be some ways to fight back, such as Faraday bags. Um, we were going to talk about the creepy mind reading tools SCAN used by police across

the country. Okay, I'm obsessed with this. Um. It was a very very dense report, So the summary is basically so last month in December, pro public A published or report titled why are cops around the world using this outlandish mind reading tool? And I was like, I will read this. It will take a long time, but I will do it. It's extremely scary. There's a tool called SCAN, which stands for Scientific Content Analysis that claims without proved to be able to detect wise and written accounts from

criminal suspects. So basically it was invented by this guy sapp here. He's the creator of SCAN, and he says I am pleased to say scan has helped solve thousands of cases over the years. It has no scientific basis. You too, Tiga suspect. You sit them down, you give them a you know, pizza paper, a pen, and you just say, write a first person account of the night in question. So they'll start writing. And then there are these color coded ways that you kind of categorize the

information that they use. So, for instance, it can be if you use the word um, if you say I was with my children and I went out and I left the kids, They're like, hold on, you said children, then you said kids, lying, You're lying. Yeah, So um. It's a really cheap, obviously way of analyzing quote unquote what someone is saying and trying to kind of get into their brain. It completely doesn't work, and it's used by the FBI, CIA, and I think the US Armed Forces.

It's just kind of like a really cheap, like minority report want to be type predictive law enforcement technology. What have you seen about sort of people's selling tech that claims to do things it can't do well? The proof I love claims with that process is great and just gonna like burst under rooms and be like, well, I claim without proof. Well, I mean it's interesting because like a lot of the language analysis stuff is based very

much on like claims without proof. But even even things like DNA testing, right that, like we put so much stock and there's still it's not this like you know thing where you're like, oh, yeah, if we got a match, then we know what a ercent certainty. There are actually all these cases where actually DNA testing is in fact, you know, led to the wrong person being apprehended and

things like that. Um, yeah, it's interesting that this is like this low fide, not even quite techy way of sort of promoting a solution that's not really verified based on anything. It also says indications of truthfulness include use of the past tense, first person singular quote I went to the store, pronouns such as my, which signal commitment, and direct denials the best being I did not do it.

Signs of deception include lack of memory, spontaneous corrections, and swapping one word for another like the kids and children um Sapierre has used this tool to analyze testimonies from Komy and Muller. Comy's testimony includes a lot of him describing opening and closing doors, like I came home, I opened the door, I opened my garage door, and Sapierre says, oh, he was the victim of childhood trauma. So they contacted Comy for this article and he was like, Wow, that

is such a load of bullshit. I wish that you could get your money back from ordering this book about this. Yeah, this one is scary because it's so dumb. But the ones that are really scary are the facial database recognition ones. And you tweet a lot about what is so bad about those, uh, specifically that they're very racist. Yeah, they're incredibly racist. Shocking, Um, I mean the application of these algorithms as racist, and then also the actual algorithms themselves

are racists and so on. Faces for people of color, they're wildly inaccurate. But again, similar to the scan stuff, it's like, oh, but we used science, and science said that this was the person, so we're going to go after this person. Yeah, and it's crazy. We've seen so much junk science from like the turn of the last century. Return the fact that people are talking about phrenology like it is a real discipline and not junk science. It

seems like with some of the tech stuff too. It's like if people don't know what is possible, like Sarah knows, they're just like, well, that sounds like you should be able to do it, So sure, I bet that program does what you're telling me. It does the stuff with

the scan, the whole scan thing. It feels like, yeah, it's possible to just analyze a statement or analyze some text that a person says, and like, you know, you can make a lot of observations about that and that can be really interesting, like just how people tend to construct thoughts like but then to attempt to draw any conclusions about that aside from just what's on the page feels like Yeah, it's like something like we we were

able to, like at least from a programming standpoint or something, uh, be able to analyze this information in a way that's sort of interesting, but then like to take it to the like magic realm after that and there are hidden

truths that you can unlock through. This feels like something that is easily like I don't know, like people who are stupid and or cops are probably easily taken in by this kind That's interesting because the last thing I pulled from the pro public thing is Um, they got a quote from this guy named Stephen Drizzen who's in Northwestern University law professor who specializes in wrongful convictions, and he's just said big claims me without scientific grounding are

suffering from overclaim syndrome, which is, you know, when they asked him why police would trust these kind of things, he said, A lot has to do with hubris, a belief on the part of police officers that they can tell when someone is lying to them with a high degree of accuracy. These tools play into that belief and confirm that belief. I wonder how many cops would I

self identify as like kind of a mentalist. Right. There was a group in l A called Stop l A p D Spying that specifically works to kind of combat these programs in l A and got some of them to not be implemented or to be stopp being implemented because they were like identifying literally children as like potential gang members and stuff like that. So it's all pretty goddamn creepy. Wait, but I have more questions for Emma regarding what is the scariest tech to you? Yeah, the scariest, Oh,

I think the deep fake stuff is pretty fucking terrifying. Um. The it's so I saw a demo video of it recently of someone who's like, I posted one picture of myself that wasn't even great. Lighting wasn't great. Um, and then I was able to generate a deep fake of like me as Leo's character in Titanic, and it does

not look computer gener like. If I hadn't seen the movie Titanic, I would be like, wow, you were on a But and I think, like that stuff is also just so terrifying, not not only because you know you could use it to make it look like someone did think, but it also just like, along with fake news, is

degrading our like trust in reality. Do you think that there's something about the increasing, like at least the films that the majority of people see, like Marvel movies and things where it's mostly all C G I and composites and stuff like that and everything stitched together. Do you think that that's like a nerd our eyes to just like ignore this sort of thing, like it all looks real, attracts and becausen't track is real in a Marvel movie. In a Marvel movie, you're like, that's c G I

in a deep fake. You're like, that's a real photograph and that's what's scary. But I hear what Emily is saying is that it's not it's not supposed to be completely realistic, but it kind of opens the door to accepting things that are not perfosing. Cream is at your eyeballs is like, that's fake, like because you just see it, Like even if your brain is like this is a movie, you're still like used to it in a way, and it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't set off alarm bells

in your brain. Right. I guess most movies just don't use c g I to try and like replicate something really boring, right, but I should well, I mean or mundane like Zodiac does a really good job of like using c g I in a way where you never notice there's c g I. So you got to see The Irishman most mundane c g I maybe of the years.

The Irishman like a movie a long deep fake basically, I mean now that they can do all of this um not only like the aging technology that they use there, but then actually like you know, they've scanned full body, scanned so many people now, like anybody who's gone through the Marvel or Disney world has been full body scanned and basically given their likeness over to me, Emma, what

can we do to combat the reep of tech and surveillance? Uh? Well, I think one thing is that we can just I mean, it takes a lot of work to do it in some ways, but just think about what we're opting into, right And because I think the other thing that I think is scary along with deep fix is what helped enabled deep fix to begin with, which is like all of that data that it took to be able to be able to create the models that allows allows you to generate a video, right, and that comes from you know,

every time we send a selfie and post it on Instagram or um ring. I think is also really problematic. I think the thing that's scary is we've also started to be sold all of these consumer products and experiences that are the underlying like intention is to harvest as much data as possible, but like we've been tricked into not seeing that part. I have a question to you, what related to this? Am I crazy when I um yell at my friend because she is going to in

up for Google Fi? No, You're not crazy? At all that that seems like a really bad ideas. I don't know what this is either. Oh, it's it's it's Google's uh cell service and internet service. So do you think we can get off of technology completely before it ruins there was left of the world. Yeah. I mean it's interesting because in the past year I've been trying to

do that in as many ways as I could. I was just telling tests before this that I, as a person that loves consuming pop culture and all kinds of media, in the past years, like tried to opt out of as much streaming as possible, as much social media, just as an exercise to do it, and it I think one of the things that was so terrifying to me is I was like, what will I do with all of my time in the silence? How will I listen

to music? And the other day I was like, I was listening to an analog radio set pumping through analog speakers of my room. Bate was like, where is the sound coming from? I was like, and FM frequency? It was kind it is. It was like nice to you know, have someone else like here in an experience and hear the news. So I think like part of it is just like also taking stuff and being like, well, do we need all of these things at the rates that

they're coming at us? And I think one thing that like if it if something feels like it's really cheap or free for the service that's providing you, likely what's happening is that it's they're not making money off of what you're paying them. They're making money off of your data. Who you are, You're the product. Yeah, I have an inverse question for you, m as somebody who knows a

lot more about this stuff than we do. I think I assume, uh, I think it's like very like I think the instinct a lots just to be like cut out all the tech, rip it out of your body, like put on your fair day hat and completely opt

out of all things. But like for you, and I know it's like different for everybody, So I wouldn't ask you to say something prescriptive for anybody else, but for you, Like, what do you think is like good positive things that you have about like that we are able to take advantage of and technology with technology, and like, yeah, I mean I think that's the thing that's hard about opting out also, right, because technology has enabled a lot of stuff that has been great, and you know, I had

knopped out of everything. I'm still on Twitter, and I sometimes I'm like, maybe I shouldn't be. But then sometimes I'm like, oh, I learned a thing from a person like halfway across the world that I don't know how I would have come across. Also, you where I find out all this news about the dvances and surveillance tech and the people fighting back against it. Um, So yeah,

I think you know. The thing that I've sort of come back to is that sort of a lot of these technologies, I see why we gave up all our data because we were like, oh, the promise of connection, the promise of communication, the promise of sharing art and ideas was like so alluring that we just were like, whatever it takes, well, we we want to get in. And I think to your point, I do think it's like, yeah, I don't think we should be like those goals were bad.

Those goals were good, and we can still strive towards them. It's just there's a way to do it without giving

all our data to like the YouTube people or whatever. Right, And I am increasingly interested in sort of uh, this idea of like platform cooperative ism, where UM the idea is that rather than having you know, a platform, a social or software platform be engineered by a bunch of people who understand tech but making decisions for people who don't, that there's more cooperation between the users, the people who are performing the core labor that is generating value for

the platform UM, and that it's like less about extracting value and more about building something that's sustainable and that actually like serves the goals that it states. It's trying to co op inter yet whichause I think like how it felt when, you know, at least for people of our generation when we started using the internet, was that it was like kind of all exactly, it's like like a directional like everybody was just instead of like having one tube everybody every reason that kind of what the

Wikipedia Social Network is attempting. It feels it feels like that. Yeah, it always feels like such a ghost town though when it is beginning, because you already have these huge established networks and then you want to leave, but then you're all by yourself. We should all leave, though I do know I would also like there to be new social media platforms made by people that aren't bad. You know, like I would like to post photos in a place where it doesn't remind me that it's owned by Facebook

every time I open it. Now, that's going to make it a lot easier to quit Instagram. I think that they added Instagram by Facebook and they did you open it? Yeah? Updated? Um, speaking of Instagram, do you think those Instagram filters where it puts a thing above your head and tells you which one you are are a psi op? Oh? Yeah, absolutely? Those are just to map your face like a reaction space. Right,

It's not really what they're doing. I mean so I think with a lot of this stuff, it's like whether or not they intend to do it today, like it actually maybe doesn't matter because if they're not trying to do it now, they still have the data so that they could use it for those reasons, right. Um. And in some cases there it's not intentional and in other cases it's Cambridge Analytica. So and I don't know, it's like one of those places where I'm like, I don't

know how much intent madters. I think there's it? Do think they're I mean, there's a lot of tech that like it's just made by people who aren't thinking about it.

That I mean because working is hard in general, and like when you're doing a thing and you can't and like you're no one is telling you think about the implications and like how this might hunt people but rather like break stuff fast and like all the money, then you're just not thinking about these things, and then you end up in situations where like the there's a story recently about how Amazon ring like surveillance cameras like previously allowed UM employees to be able to like scan through

that footage, right, And I think it was probably not intended to do that, but um, someone wasn't thinking about privacy as like a you know, a huge important thing when they were developing it, and so then it just created this mechanism that other people could exploit or manipulate. Yeah, well, thank you so much for coming on, Emma. Yeah, it's good to have a professional expert voice about I'm just I'm not I don't know if I'm a professional expert voice.

Well it's a professional paranoid voice. We need that. Um Yeah, thanks so much. Where can people find you on Twitter? For as long as you decided to stay on Twitter? I'm on the internet on Twitter, sometimes uh, and my handle is Emma Chew, but it's TCU instead of so E M M A TCU, And I mostly tweet about scary surveillance shoot, which is right up are Alton cool. Thanks, Thanks, y'all.

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