MundaneBlog

November 9, 2024

Links you should read – 2024-11-8

Filed under: Daily Links — Tags: , , — DrMundane @ 3:02 am

https://www.popehat.com/p/and-yet-it-moves

Most especially the section “Fuck Civility”

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-1280/316471/20240708144004496_23-1280%20Parents%20Protecting%20Our%20Children%20v%20Eau%20Claire%20Area%20School%20District%20-%20Amicus%20Brief%20of%20Virginia%20and%2015%20Other%20States.pdf

Amicus Brief in Parents Protecting Our Children, UA v. Eau Claire Area School District joined by 16 states. “Parents Rights” (to be transphobic, or to control their children). I may write more on this.

https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-social-media-tells-you-who-you-are-what-if-its-totally-wrong/

see also: gender classifier. I can report from experience how the algorithms they develop seem to lean into pushing content once they have decided you are a {thing} that gets engagement. I can also report that it’s uncomfortable when they get it wrong and keep pushing.

As Goode says:

“…In both cases, I’m supposed to tell the algorithms who I am. I’m supposed to do the work. I’m supposed to swipe more. I’ll be so much better off if I do. And so will they.”

We loose when we don’t let the algorithms know who we are, but we sure as shit also loose when we do. A double bind, right?

https://www.usermag.co/p/why-democrats-wont-build-their-own

November 6, 2024

The 2024 Election – First Reaction

Filed under: Notes — Tags: , , — DrMundane @ 12:43 pm

I can’t write.

My thoughts are too scattered.

I hope to start coming up with something soon.

I wish truly, for everyone, as much comfort and safety as is possible for today.

November 5, 2024

“Gender Classifier” redux

Filed under: Gender,Technology — Tags: , , , , — DrMundane @ 12:49 am

As a follow up to my previous post, I also noticed while looking through the one AI companies page that they had a “gender classifier” for text too.

I had wanted to test their classifier, but was not about to upload my face or anyone else’s to some fucking AI company. But text? I can live with uploading a little of my own text (as a treat).

I started out with some fiction, something with dialog and some action interspersed. In truth it was erotica, but I skipped any descriptive action of actual intercourse. Honestly I was just interested what it would make of it. The result? “Female 70.71% confident”.

Ok, what if I swing the other direction, nonfiction? An excerpt of a blog post from this site or two. Say my last post (linked above). “Male 60.22% confident”. Trying another post I get “Male 67.71% confident”.

The straight ahead, non fiction, or opinion type of work seems to get the male classification. An artifact, I assume, of the gender normative source material and of the patriarchy in publishing, or of the biases of the humans classifying the dataset.

Trying one last example, this time an excerpt from my private writings (my diary/commonplace book takes the form of notes in the apple notes app a lot of times). It certainly leans more on my feelings and such, and not on straight ahead opinion and references. Results for one entry? “Female 66.21% confident”

Now I must admit the whole experiment here gave me some ill feelings, to say the least. Being classified did not sit right with me at all. It feels as though your self is being crushed back into one label or the other and that you have been reduced. But one more thought grabbed my interest.

What would it classify this writing as?

It is like gazing into a mirror, no, as if you can gaze through the eyes of another. How does anyone really take my work? What voice do they hear? I know, in my heart of hearts, that I should not care about such things. Even if I do, the AI will not be the eyes of another human. It is a statistical daydream.

And besides I wrote the word patriarchy (now twice), so I imagine that should add 20% Female points right there.

Nevertheless, I put everything from this sentence to the top into the classifier.

Results: “Female 52.23% confident”.

So a toss up. But I had to know, what if I replaced patriarchy with, say, normativity? Does it make a difference?

I literally clapped my hands and laughed. “Male 50.42% confident”. So it adds exactly 2.65% “female-ness” to say patriarchy twice. lol.

fuck these people and their products. never let them take root and give them no quarter, no serious consideration.

P.S.

I thought suddenly, “what’s 100% confident look like? What could one write to make it sure?”.

How about “I am a woman/I am a man”? Very high confidence there.

Results: “I am a man” : “Male 55.23% confident”.

”I am a woman”: “Female 82.15% confident”.

I had a couple of other thoughts:

“I am a nonbinary”: (I kept the grammar similar in the interests of fairness) “Female 83.79% confident”

“I am a trans man”: “Male 54.96% confident”

“I am a trans woman”: “Female 84.79% confident”

Of course it isn’t designed to interpret anyone actually stating their gender, but still. I hope it shows the hollow nature of the technology. How absolutely unfit for purpose it is. Let alone how its purpose is needless et cetera I’m looping here.

And I just had fun fucking around with it. Costs them money too, I imagine, to run the queries.

November 4, 2024

Gender Normativity and Facial Recognition

Filed under: Gender,Uncategorized — Tags: , , — DrMundane @ 11:48 am

Reading the always wonderful “Pivot to AI” by Amy Castor and David Gerard, and they link to a great 2019 piece by Os Keyes, “The Body Instrumental” which was new to me and enjoyable. Well, enjoyable in that particular way that any sufficiently prescient and worrying thing can be enjoyable. I have been thinking briefly as of late on heteronormativity, so both articles were a great coincidence.

I can’t restate any point not already sufficiently covered by the two articles above, but it really does strike me that any such “gender determining” (perhaps really “sex determining” in the end is their goal, reflecting the binary and exclusive nature of sex and gender for them, not that either is so binary as they think) AI will be inescapably heteronormative (perhaps “gender normative”, as I am speaking mostly in the gender, expression, and such things realm, not in the relational sense, although I take the term to apply to both. I can not claim to be an experienced scholar of gender, so forgive me if my terminology is incorrect. I was just reading Sex in Public, so, like, 1998?. Still very much a relevant work in my mind, but my cognition is biased towards that which I can remember in the moment).

The training data is classified first by humans, who will have to fit each photo into a binary category, man or woman. Most of the data will likely be of people who “pass” or perform gender in the correct way, simply owing to the dominance of such images in the training data. Movies, photos, public domain images, et cetera. Simply by volume alone the normative wins out, and therefore any such AI will be biased in its favor. It will be biased to fit people into these categories.

Turning to prognostication, who will be allowed to opt out? To gate access to a room or facility behind such an AI means that the non-normative, the queer, will be penalized. Even if one is notionally allowed to opt out, the process of doing so may very well lead to further stigmatization simply by virtue of being the different one.

As Keyes states: “We should focus on delegitimizing the technology altogether, ensuring it never gets integrated into society, and that facial recognition as a whole (with its many, many inherent problems) goes the same way.”

I could not have said it better or any earlier. You simply must read the whole article, as the portion on how the AI will reshape gender in its image is brilliant and gets to the very heart of not just the AI problem, but of problems of gender in society more broadly.

November 2, 2024

random notes – film

Filed under: Notes,Photography — Tags: , — DrMundane @ 1:45 am

I love my negatives

Actually, I hate them. They are an encumbrance. 

I love shooting the pictures, talking to the people at the lab

I love scanning them.  

I love looking through all the final photos in Lightroom.

The objects themselves pile up. Waiting to be needed or until I presume I die. 

I won’t throw them away willingly, of that I am sure.

I hold them sometimes and know that these, really, are my photos. 

The digital side is ephemera. These are light on silver. Permanent, for certain values of permanent.

October 25, 2024

Consumerism – Whole Body Deodorant

Filed under: Consumerism — Tags: , — DrMundane @ 8:36 pm

Posting some old thoughts (2024-9-7)

The recent (at least this year per my perception) advertising blitz of these whole body deodorants appears to me as a sign of peak capitalism, or perhaps just a very stark example of the craven nature of sales.

I will start with the natural question: How many places on the human body smell all that much to begin with? Per my recollection, the apocrine sweat glands, in the underarm area and the pubic area. I think perhaps behind the ears and perhaps somewhere else, but they are limited. 

To quote Wikipedia: “In humans, apocrine sweat glands are found only in certain locations of the body: the axillae(armpits), areola and nipples of the breast, ear canal, eyelids, wings of the nostril, perineal region, and some parts of the external genitalia.”

–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocrine_sweat_gland accessed 2024-9-7

I can not say I find any areas sans the armpits to have too terrible a smell. Apparently, even in this modern era of an American sensibility that trends towards intense fragrance, such things have not been a problem up until the present. But I am to be led to believe, by the existence of ads letting me know, that one should be concerned with such smells.

I am not convinced.

Now I must, to be fair, admit to enjoying fragrance myself. But the difference must be that I have no feeling of being without if I smell of nothing.

Or perhaps I can not tell anymore. 

Returning to the issue, it is sensible to analogize the current advertising blitz, in online ads and TV commercials, to that which brought us deodorant at all. I think it is well known that such consumer desires and even social expectations were in part if not in whole driven by commercial concerns from the turn of the century on. 

I extend no benefit of the doubt that such commercial concerns are at work presently trying to induce demand. 

I think it is indicative of the constant growth mindset. Having perhaps saturated the current market for deodorant with brands and scents and varieties that provide plenty of ‘individuation’ through consumption. It has reached the conclusion. There is perhaps no more room in that market for growth, only a steady state of consumption. This is apparently not enough for them.

They need a new product. Not a replacement, of course, but a reason to consume more, or add another product.

It is important to discuss such a view or such a possibility so as to hopefully convince others and head these advertisers and companies off in their commercial ambitions.

I think it offends so much since it is once more turning the human body (and some things I happen to appreciate about it, like the real smells) into something homogeneous. 

Inducing shame in someone to sell must be thought of as unacceptable. It should be named as what it is, craven exploitation of human weakness. 

As another aside, I refuse to be homogenized or to be what some would say I ought to be. This offends that sensibility in me. 

October 22, 2024

Dumb Post – Small annoyances 1

Filed under: Small Annoyances — Tags: , — DrMundane @ 12:12 am

You know those small annoyances that really ruin probably only your day (well, probably me plus 1 million people)?

Well I’ve happened upon one of those, courtesy of Unilever.

Like most (many?) folks I wash my face twice a day (I would be interested to see the statistics on that). I have always found Dove to be a very good bar of soap for this. I also think it to be a great shaving soap. After trying others I find them to be drying and all around not as good. Washing your face then shaving the lather off feels like a time saver too.

Now, upon buying a new 12 pack (somehow more expensive than a fifth of Evan Willams… *shudder*), I quickly detect that the scent has definitely changed. Very one note, not particularly refined. My mind tells me “cheaper”. Bummer but whatever. Now upon getting in the shower (the bar at the sink had some life left) I soon find my face burning quite distinctly. Much like Evan Willams again. It was not a mystery to me what the cause was, but nevertheless I resolved to use the whole bar. Sometimes your face gets sensitive or what not. This was not a temporary condition, and in the mornings washing my face at the sink I had no such issues. They have ruined their soap. Sigh.

This annoys me so much. I also feel like “well, shit, now I need to figure out some other bar of soap for my face”. This feels like a no brainer business. You sell me the same bar of soap (or reasonably equal, there have been at least 2 versions within my possession that both work fine) and I buy it for 70 odd years. I am fine with this deal. Then they fuck it up and now I’m left having to do work and put my face on the line to find a solution.

And I must assume there is a capitalist motive here. Cheaper fragrance, cheaper ingredients, or maybe just some perverse middle management drive to “modernize” “update” “refresh”. I find it interesting that the positive reviews (on Target at least) are all of the “Influenster” variety, read, “send free product for a review”. The negative ones, I imagine, are from folks like me who aren’t paid off. The astroturfing seems to work well enough, combined with the history of positive reviews. The rating continues to be 5 starts for a clearly inferior product.

I actually make my own soap on occasion, it’s quite fun, but I have never liked it for my face. The good thing about modern chemistry is they can put all sorts of molecules or whatever in their soap that I can’t get with the good old saponification process.

I will try and raid the local stores for any left over old bars, then begin a search in earnest for a new soap I predict.

I didn’t think I’d write this much, but here we are. Apparently it annoys me quite a lot.

October 19, 2024

This is how it begins

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — DrMundane @ 12:16 am

Those were my thoughts upon reading the NYT this morning.

I want to leave it at that, but it feels as though I owe the thought a few more words.

I think if one was going for trans genocide, this is certainly a good way to keep the ball rolling (The closure of the clinic happened in 2021, but now I am reminded again of the cruelty). This is because we, as a nation, have certain thoughts (generally) about children and their personhood. Mainly they aren’t full people and for many they are more akin to property. Therefore, a child can have no sense of their gender (2024-11-16 edit – and/or sex) outside of their parents’ sense of what the child’s gender (2024-11-16 edit – and/or sex) ought to be.

Furthermore, as the whole thing has turned into a ‘culture war’ and a political talking point, far separated from the actual issue of: doing the right thing, quantifying what’s the best way to help these children, or creating a humane society that won’t discriminate against them or use them as a target of violence for political gain and personal gratification (I must imagine.).

I could keep writing but it belabors my final point.

I do believe that presently the Republican Party and others are engaged in a campaign of eventual trans genocide and queer genocide more generally. The point is to try and destroy all those who are trans and prevent certainly anyone else from coming out. I think a murder is a murder, no matter if you pulled the trigger or just loaded the gun. If you create a society where trans kids can’t get care, you are creating a society that is ok with some of those kids killing themselves. It is murder by the lawmakers’ hands all the same.

You start with children since they are vulnerable and the parents are more easily convinced to doubt. Once that’s done you prevent adults from living as they are and as they please. The cruelty happens to be a happy bonus, from giving the mob their enemy.

From there, if it doesn’t happen simultaneously, I expect same sex marriage and queerness in general to be the target.

I have some hope that such a thing will be unacceptable to the wider American public. But I worry that the American public is still sufficiently transphobic in a large enough quantity that people will be hurt. I know it, in fact, as they are already hurting people.

I find it terribly hard to get to an ending. I wonder if I’m not overselling the point.

But it’s hard to listen to these people and not believe them when they tell the world what they want.

Let it never be said DrMundane isn’t passionate about anything…. Right? Who knows.

October 10, 2024

Opting Out 2 – Unintended Consequences

Filed under: Surveillance — Tags: , , , , — DrMundane @ 10:43 am

Reading Ars as I do, this morning’s thought provoking story is via Ashley Belanger.

”X Ignores revenge porn takedown requests unless DCMA is uses, study says”

My comments are less on the story itself, more on a portion that provoked some thought. To put the quote up front:

Since AI image generators are trained on real photos, researchers also took steps to ensure that AI-generated NCII in the study did not re-traumatize victims or depict real people who might stumble on the images on X.

“Each image was tested against a facial-recognition software platform and several reverse-image lookup services to verify it did not resemble any existing individual,” the study said. “Only images confirmed by all platforms to have no resemblance to individuals were selected for the study.”

These more “ethical” images were posted on X using popular hashtags like #porn, #hot, and #xxx, but their reach was limited to evade potential harm, researchers said.

I was immediately thinking of my previous post upon reading this.

I think it’s fair to say that no one consented to being in facial-recognition software platforms. I certainly did not. Furthermore, I expect a victim of NCII (non consensual intimate imagery) to have likely gone through the steps to remove themselves from any such site, as part of trying to control their likeness across the web. So it strikes me as imperfect to rely on such services to make sure you do not re-traumatize people.

The grander point is that no one consented to being in the AIs dataset, or perhaps only those whose faces appear in CC0 licensed works. No one consented to being in face search databases. And so it strikes me as a grand irony to use these to ensure folks who have been victims of NCII are not one again non-consensually used.

I don’t know what the ‘better’ way to do such research is, to be sure. I imagine their actions in limiting reach on X also helped to mitigate harm to people. I imagine their methods were reviewed by an IRB and received their approval. I think the research was conducted ethically, and do not fault the researchers, to be clear.

I fault the system that allows such wonton use and abuse of others work for the gain of uninvolved AI grifters and scummy website operators (here’s looking at you, face search sites).

P.S. (I thought of this after publishing, so putting it here for transparency)

I think it’s safe to say given X’s loose moderation that AI (likely grok, right?) has already included NCII images and will therefore be generating images based on work they have no right to use (and certainly have a moral duty to exclude in my mind).

October 5, 2024

Facial Recognition – Who is allowed to Opt Out?

Filed under: Surveillance — Tags: , , , — DrMundane @ 1:41 am

Reading Ars Technica this morning, an article on doxing everyone (everyone!) with Meta’s (née facebook) smart glasses. The article is of great import, but I headed over to the linked paper that detailed the process. The authors, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, were kind enough to provide links giving instructions on removing your information from the databases linked. Although I imagine it becomes a war of attrition as they scrape and add your data back.

Naturally I followed these links to get an idea of how one would go about removing their data from these services. I was particularly interested with the language on the one service, FaceCheck.id.

To quote the part that stuck out to me:

We reserve the right not to remove photos of child sex offenders, convicted rapists, and other violent criminals who could pose physical harm to innocent people.

Now this is terribly interesting to me. It makes clear the difference between what they purport to sell, or be, or give, and what they actually speaking are. In fact, the contrast is enhanced if only you read down the page a little:

DISCLAIMER: For educational purposes only. All images are indexed from public, readily available web pages only.

Ah, so it’s for educational purposes, but they reserve the right to make sure that some people remain visible, ostensibly in the interests of ‘public safety’. They, of course, are not the courts. They have no information that allows them to assess who presents a risk to others, and even if they did a private entity has no right to do so. Is this valuable in actually protecting people? I am not sold on that. If someone poses a danger then by all means, let the court’s sentencing and probation reflect that.

What is the education here? Should we profile based on those who have been caught? What have we learned through this venture? Surely such a high minded educational site will have peer reviewed research that is advanced through this educational database.

What they do have, what they sell, are the lurid possibilities. Sell the darkness and sell knowing. How can you know if someone is a child sex offender? How can you know if your nice neighbor once beat a man? What if? What if? What if?

You can know who’s a rapist or a ‘violent criminal’. You know your child will be safe, since you check every person they meet. Safety is for sale. Never mind that this likely isn’t the best way to protect children. Never mind the fact they served their sentence, they were violent criminals once. Never mind the racial bias of the justice system. Never mind a case of mistaken identity on these services’ part.

They veil these much baser interests, the interest in profiting off of speculation; sowing distrust and fear, in the cloak of public safety and moral responsibility. Furthermore, the entire public is caught in their dragnet.

I take it as a solid assumption that the “shitty tech adaption curve” is true.

Here is the shitty tech. Who isn’t allowed to opt out now?

Who is next?

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