Chicago Redshirt
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Posts posted by Chicago Redshirt
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5 hours ago, millennium said:
Is there anyone out there who after watching this episode would hire Jake as their lawyer?
Eh, there is really nothing he has done or failed to do in the game that makes me think "Man, he can't be trusted to do a competent job as a lawyer."
Keep in mind, there are different types of lawyers and probably not too many people are 100 percent awesome at 100 percent of the facets of lawyering.
Jake is an assistant public defender. Many of the things that one has to do to be good at that job (being able to analyze evidence, reports and interviews, come up with presentations, know and understand how to apply the law, know how to question witnesses, know how to address a jury) aren't really things that have been showcased in anyone's mid-game.
He fell for Bruce's lie about having given his idol to Kellie, which might make him naive in game terms. But that doesn't necessarily translate into him being naive in the real world or as an attorney.
He had a little bit more of a breakdown when he realized Bruce was playing him and had doubts about his own BS meter, but I assume some of that was probably exaggerated for the cameras and some of it was amplified by a lack of sleep/food/etc.
He has stumbled over his words some, but again, I'd expect that is something that is worsened by game conditions.
If anything, it would be the opposite. By all rights, Jake should have been voted out twice and he's still here. Maybe/probably not for much longer unless he pulls another rabbit from a hat. I wouldn't mind someone that lucky on my side.
In the dark about what kind of law Katurah and Julie practice, I don't see Jake as being obviously worse a choice for generic representation than either of them.
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I guess it is somewhat of a spoiler, but what do the Viltrumites want with all the planets in their empire, anyway? Is it just an ideological thing, or are they stripping them for resources or what? Because it seems like enslaving a planet like Earth is probably more trouble than it's worth.
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4 hours ago, JudyObscure said:
That was exactly how Dee had her legs and she was doing fine, until the part when they all were ordered to straighten out their legs, at which point Dee's long strong legs became a liability pulling against her arms and she immediately dropped.
It is not mere coincidence that once Dee could not use her Quentin-Tarintino-worthy, self-described freakish feet to her advantage she was out. :)
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Looking ahead, I am curious if the women bonding over the reward challenge might lead to a realignment in which Jake gets voted off next, and then the four women decide they want to try to turn on Austin/Drew to oust them.
When will the Reba 4 decide to turn on each other, and how? And can Emily and Katurah (and Jake if he sticks around) take advantage on prompt the sudden but inevitable betrayal by Rebas to happen sooner?
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15 minutes ago, bankerchick said:
Granted, I am not afraid of water, nor did I ever cut off contact with my mother, but this comment makes no sense to me. So, she got a letter, then the next day, everything appeared to be fine but she suddenly thought to herself, 'oh yeah, I got a letter from my mother yesterday. I'm afraid of water now!?'
I'm assuming the thought is that Katurah was so shaken by hearing from her mother that it affected her performance. But either she sublimated that panic at hearing for her mother into a panic attack over the water, or she consciously lied about/exaggerated her fear of the water to cover the real reason for her panic.
I have a deep-seated fear of drowning and can barely swim. People who have posted in Survivor threads from previous seasons may remember me not liking the "hang on to the grate mostly submerged for as long as you can" and seeing that as non-entertaining and quasi-torture. But my reaction to Katurah here was, shall we say, less than sympathetic.
Putting aside the notion that there are clearly safety measures that would prevent her from drowning in all but the most freakish of circumstances (both Survivors and safety swimmers nearby), not only is the water calm enough so that there's no reason to think that an accident might happen, but as Katurah eventually chose to do, she could simply step off the rack onto the platform without going to the water. Again, I'm watching this from the comfort of my couch with a full belly. But no matter what tricks her mind might be playing on her, I don't see how the circumstances could be so scary to her in that moment. And then assuming they were, it doesn't make sense to me that she wouldn't take Jeff up on the offer to get in the boat from the dock.
It struck me more like some acting to garner sympathy for herself and to give herself a talking point should she get to FTC because right now, her Survivor resume reads:
FINALLY voted Bruce out with my Acme-brand parchment.
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23 minutes ago, Nashville said:
In all the back-and-forth of why Bruce wouldn’t play his idol, I haven’t seen one other person mention what (to me, anyway) is clearly the primary factor: for all his braggadocio, Bruce is an incredibly insecure person who cannot think strategically without someone he COMPLETELY trusts as “His Person” reinforcing his thought processes on every move.
- Kellie was Bruce’s original His Person - despite her clear irritation with him - but he lost her.
- Bruce tries to replace Kellie with both Katurah and Jake in turn, but neither appears to measure up; Jake as a player is subpar and untrustworthy, while Katurah remains as confrontational and difficult to communicate with as ever (for Bruce, anyway).
- Emily, however, appears to Bruce to be a dream come true; Emily tells Bruce what other people are thinking about him, and is willing to talk strategy and make plans with him. As a result, Bruce immediately and wholeheartedly gloms onto Emily to an almost embarrassing degree.
Bruce’s buying into Emily’s schtick 100% is the only explanation I can think of for Bruce not playing his idol - and his near-pathological need for a His Person is the only reason I can see why.
Occam's Razor: Bruce simply and overconfidently jumped at the chance to have his cake and eat it too (i.e. work with his perceived four to vote off Julie, keep his idol and remain safe on Emily's say-so.). There's no need for a deeper psychological profile of him than that.
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1 hour ago, Fretful said:
With Bruce, I think we may see the end of the bitter, pissy-faced jury at tribal. I just don't think he has it in him to hold a grudge over a game. However, I can imagine its return if Dee or Drew get voted out next week.
But unless something drastic happens soon, Dee or Austin wins this season. Both are playing excellent games. I think Dee has a stronger post-merge resume, but Austin still has those 2 idols...
Although I have a perception of Bruce being one to believe "All's fair in love and Survivor," I would not be shocked if he does end up being bitter. Of the remaining contestants, I think that at least a couple have fairly strong potential to be bitter jurors (Drew and Dee) and about the only one I would be surprised if she turns out bitter is Julie.
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10 minutes ago, SummerDreams said:
The women during the reward confirming that Bruce or Jake (the only two players who would get zero votes in the final tribal council) will be voted out and the men burping and fishing while they could be talking strategy represents perfectly this season; stupidity and lack of strategy.
In fairness, Bruce and Jake are (seemingly) dead men walking. They have nothing strategic to offer Austin and Drew, no information to give them that could be believed, nothing that could further either of their games.
By contrast, each of the women stands to benefit from bonding and strategizing with the rest.
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8 minutes ago, Bazinga said:
Wouldn't they be doing that anyway? He just won two immunity challenges in a row and is a immunity challenge threat; he was getting their votes, how does not having the idol get more votes? He needed to do nothing, allow for a Bruce/Jake split and use his idol to get Jake out and survive.
As we saw, they split the vote knowing he had an idol as a precaution.
If they thought he didn't have an idol, they might not have bothered to split the vote and just gone 4+ votes on Bruce, all to be nullified by the idol.
Also, they might not have had the votes to split. As it worked out, they were able to convince Jake and Katurah to vote Bruce. If Jake and Katurah had bought into Bruce's plan, they could have voted for whatever Reba and that person would have gone home 3-1 or 3-0 depending on how Emily voted.
Having the 4 Reba votes plus Emily's makes a vote split risky. If all 3 Belos vote united, they could win 3-2, if the Rebas made Bruce the primary target, counted on votes from Emily, Katurah and Jake that they don't get and Bruce plays the idol.
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58 minutes ago, Bazinga said:
I don't agree making himself vulnerable by not having the idol has that result; I think his lie has the opposite affect from his doing nothing and allowing the others to think he has the idol. If the Reba 4 think he doesn't have the idol, then they do not need to split their votes, and they put their four votes on Bruce, the immunity challenge threat. This might lead to a tie with his four person bloc (him, Katurah, I assume, as he was trusting her with the lie, maybe Emily and maybe Jake, who he was lying to) voting for Julie. I don't even think the Julie part was part of his original plan. Going after Julie was Emily's idea or Emily's lie to lull him into a false sense of security and I am not sure he was even planning on forming a voting alliance to use the lie in any way. I don't think he had a grand plan beyond look at my lie, I am soooo strategic. If he wanted Jake out, he could say nothing and just use his idol and vote out Jake himself with everyone else splitting their votes between Jake, the other player most on the outs, and himself with votes against him being nullified. From history, Katurah and Emily, who are safe, are not going to vote themselves into a tie situation. Bruce would have benefited from the others thinking he had the idol, splitting their votes on him and someone else and then forming a voting bloc to vote someone out while using the idol. Instead he did the opposite, making himself more of a target. The idol and using it was his protection and would have saved him for one vote allowing him to possibly win immunity going forward. That's my opinion: a pointless lie that probably hurts him more than helps but makes him feel like he is a great player.
Maybe I'm not clear or maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
Scenario A: Status quo of everyone knowing Bruce has an idol still means that the Reba 4 can either do as they did (target Bruce AND an alternate target in a vote split) or they decide to put 4 votes minimum on someone. Bruce won't necessarily be able to predict who, and would be ill-advised to loan the idol to protect that person.
Scenario B: If Bruce's lie is accepted that he gave his idol away, the Reba 4 likely put all 4 votes on Bruce (rather than choose an alternative target or split their votes. They may even get Emily/Jake/Katurah to come along for the ride. Bruce can then nullify their 4 votes (and anyone else who comes along for the ride) through his playing the idol and ideally pick who goes home from Reba with his allies. (There is some possibility that the Reba 4 either disbelieve Bruce's lie or get paranoid that he has found/will find a reseeded idol anyway, and vote split.)
Bruce explicitly said to Katurah his plan was Scenario B. Katurah said in a TH this is a dumb plan.
I think in a vacuum, it's a fine plan if it is not blown up by Katurah's complete willingness to cut off her nose to spite her face and her burning hatred of Bruce. Katurah's own self-interest should have led to her keeping her mouth shut. But her burning hatred of Bruce led her to blab and allowed the Reba 4 to make the right play of weakening Belo further regardless of whether Bruce played the idol.
The realistic best case result in Scenario A for Bruce is he plays the idol and is safe for this tribal, but one of his potential allies against the Rebas gets voted out. Going forward, he still has to win individual immunity or he will most likely get voted off since he has won 2 and almost won a third.
The realistic best case result in Scenario B for Bruce is he plays his idol, he makes a Big Move(tm) resulting in equalizing the Belo/Reba split. While he still probably is going to face a vote off if he doesn't win individual immunity, at least under this scenario it's plausible he could have the numbers.
I think the ceiling on Scenario B is far higher than Scenario A.
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1 hour ago, Carey said:
I'd consider betting that Bruce knew he wasn't winning so it's not a big deal.
Everything we have been shown of Bruce suggests that he thinks he is a far better player than he in fact is, so I have 10,000 quatloos that say that he in fact thought he coulda been a contenda, he could have been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what he is. h/t to On The Waterfront.
He seemingly was angling for a third bite of the apple in his exit interview. Please, Survivor PTB, do not cast him in an all-star season.
Random thought that came up this episode: once Katurah talked about how she had been estranged from her mother, I kind of wanted Bruce to hook up with Mama Katurah and continue her grudge after the game.
**Yes, I know Bruce is married to someone who is going to confirm for him that he's not at all patronizing or overbearing, no matter what pretty much every contestant said. There are other ways to hook up besides hooking up.
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Has Survivor ever used popular music like they did in this episode's bro'ing out segment? I can't remember any, but I've missed a bunch of seasons and also have a non-encyclopedic memory of things.
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13 minutes ago, Bazinga said:
I am sure he thought he was being brilliant, but Bruce's idol to Kellie lie was pointless. There are three reasons he had a target on him: 1) he has an idol; 2) he just won two immunity challenges in a row; 3) he is not liked and hard to work with. The last one, he is only vaguely aware of but the other two, he knows. So how would the lie about not having the idol serve him? If he doesn't actually have an idol, the tribe wants to vote him out because he is an immunity threat and has finally lost. If he does have an idol and he is lying, the tribe wants to vote him out anyway because they want him to use the idol and then be vulnerable going forward or not use it and leave with it. So his big lie is pointless. Telling Katurah weakened the lie but the lie could never benefit him or change anything for him. By winning two ICs, he is a big target; it is too late to remove the 'he has an idol' target. With the lie or without the lie, he needed to use his idol to at least survive and deflect the vote out onto someone else. Not using his idol makes no sense. No way were Katurah and Emily going to vote out Julie, as they didn't have the votes necessary; it would have been a tie and he has to know that Katurah and Emily are not going to risk a tie. The only way the vote out Julie plan works is if there were a defection from the Reba 4 to break the tie and we didn't have that. Bruce was ridiculous for creating a pointless lie and for not using his idol when he was vulnerable to being voted out.
The reason for the lie would be to get the Rebas to put 100 percent of their votes on him, meaning that he, Jake and Katurah would likely dictate who goes home if they were a solid bloc (which they obviously were not). Lulling the Rebas into a false sense that he was 100 percent vulnerable isn't a crazy plan.
If the Rebas act on the information/belief that Bruce has an idol, the can either put all their firepower on Jake or someone else hoping for a flush of Bruce's idol, or they can try to engineer a vote split where Bruce loses if he doesn't play the idol but the other person they target goes home. The Rebas had the numbers for the latter, since Bruce had zero allies.
If the Rebas act on the belief that Bruce is idol-less, they might not think to split their votes. But again, for the plan to work, he has to actually play his idol and nullify all those Reba votes. It seems like he abandoned the plan of trying to fool them, because everyone knew he had an idol and he lied about it having gone home with Kellie. But he should have known he had a target for the reasons you said and played it anyway.
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8 minutes ago, 30 Helens said:
If you’re going to arrange some elaborate lie about losing your idol, maybe don’t tell anyone that it’s a lie. Just saying. I don’t think Bruce is a bad guy, but his cockiness was always going to be his undoing.
Bruce, clueless to the end, expected Katurah to be his ally. If she was and she kept the lie to herself, it wouldn't be a problem. Alas, Bruce apparently can't read the visceral hatred Katurah has for Bruce well enough to know that of course she's going to blow up his spot.
So I have to modify my comment earlier. Bruce did make a half-hearted attempt this episode to get a Reba out. But the way he did it was super-incompetent. If he had been, "Look, Katurah, I know I rub you the wrong way sometimes, but it's best for your game if we get one of the Rebas out. And Mama J its the bill. We can do it if we have you me and Jake, and they put all the votes on me. They can't risk a vote split if they have four plus Emily if we are three strong. Because if they pick wrong, they lose 3-2, and even if they pick wrong, they could lose on revote. If you vote with the Rebas, you can't be more than 5th. If you go with this plan, you could get to the FTC." maybe it would have worked.
Bruce also had to at that later point admit to Jake that he'd lied.
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3 hours ago, violet and green said:
Every single time the old Belo remnants has had an opportunity to get the numbers advantage they squander it - and are pleased with themselves. If they'd actually used the fool Bruce decoy plan and got out Julie, then they might have had a fighting chance going forward, but Emily wanted to win brownie points for a move, and Katurah was like the cat that got the cream at getting out Bruce finally, and Jake was just anyone but me... So irritating.
The thing that makes it even more so irritating is that the old Belo folks didn't even seem to realize that Reba-strong was a thing, or consider being Belo-strong or Belo+Lulu strong in retaliation/self-defense. They systematically ate each other as much as allowed the Rebas to pick them off. Might be wrong, but there has never been as far as we have been shown a serious effort to get a Reba out since the merge. They squandered their 5-4-2 numbers advantage over petty BS and blew up their own spot to the point it's 2-4-1. Now I don't see what the 3 non-Rebas have to offer any of the Rebas to flip, even if they see the danger of the situation they're in. And we haven't seen any signs that they realize they're being systematically eliminated or attempts to play for anything above 5th.
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37 minutes ago, princelina said:
I thought them taking the letters out of the packets made it look like multiple letters - a big sheaf of paper in multiple colors. My question would be how did they get that letter - Mr P and his father are estranged and if he went on Survivor I doubt his dad would even know about it!
I am here to see if someone can explain Emily's strategy to me - she did apparently convince Bruce to hang on to his idol so I get that, but how did the votes coordinate with that, and who was in on it? She said if it worked she would get kudos from the tribe for pulling it off. We in the P household are confused! 😳
The Reba 4 plus Emily were in on it. Jake could have been looped in, too, but they didn't need his vote so they might not have told them.
The plan was to split the vote so that if Bruce played his idol, Jake goes home. Jake either on his own or with prompting from the rest of the tribe votes Bruce. Three of the rest vote Bruce, three of the rest vote Jake, Bruce votes whoever.
What I don't understand is that Bruce spent time trying to fool people into thinking he no longer had an idol in an effort to get people to focus on him so that he and whoever he hoovered up could dictate who goes.
Contrary to what Katurah said, not a bad plan. It's sort of basic.
But the problem with it is you have to commit to it. Once you do, you can't not play your idol. Better to have the idol flushed than to have it be a pocket idol.
What will fill these 1.5 hour episodes without the many Katurah THs about "I hate Bruce with the heat of 10,000 suns"?
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1 hour ago, iMonrey said:
You say that is if it should be obvious to anyone, but to us right-brained people, it's not. For one thing I wouldn't automatically assume 9 and 8 are 98 or that 7 and 6 are 76. Could be 9 and 87, could be 987, could be 9, 8, 7 and 6. For some people, math comes naturally. These are called left-brained people. They excel at numbers and figures. Right-brained people are more inclined towards language and communication. The catch-22 is that people who are good at math are bad at explaining it to people who aren't.
I don't think it's "obvious." Again, I have the luxury of being able to think about the situation while being well-fed, not being televised, and having no stakes. I just think it's not so baffling a puzzle that it should take the average person more than an hour to figure it out. I don't think it's a right-brain, left-brain sort of thing. Heck, even Brandon from earlier this season would be able to beat it, given that sort of time frame.
A mix of trial and error, logic, luck and/or intuitively understanding some of the things that I articulated in my earlier post without coming to the conclusions through logic.
It simply can't be 987+ for the reason that I said earlier: there's no way to reduce the total to 100 starting that high with only one minus sign in the mix and having to put two additional plus signs. 987+6-543+2+1 is obviously way more than 100.
I think trial and error would quickly reveal that you can't have more than one single digit number in the mix: 9+8+(7654321) for instance, shows that only having two more operators, you are going to have at least a triple digit number, which will put you way over 100, or way under if it's a negative.
Just brute forcing it starts you with four categories of possibilities:
9+(87654321)
Starting with 9 as a single digit means there needs to be an operation sign between each of the remaining two digit combos. The only question is which gets the minus. As far as I can see, there are only the following combos starting with 9+:
9+87-65+43+21
9+87+65-43+21
9+87+65+43-21
9-(87654321)
9-87+65+43+21 is the only possibility here that I can see, once you factor in that there can't be any triple-digit numbers and that you have to have all the operational signs you have to have.
9-87 is -78, then you get to -13, then 30, then 51.
98+(7654321)
98-(7654321)
I think trial and error would/should soon reveal that 98+X is starting too close to 100 to land exactly there.
98-7+65+43+21 is obviously going to be way over 100.
Maybe I am overly optimistic about people's math/logic skills and their intuition, but I think taking 5-10 minutes to think about the problem and then just starting working through the equations in any systematic (or at least non-mathphobic) way shouldn't take the average person more than an hour.
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On 11/13/2023 at 2:38 PM, PurpleTentacle said:
So upload testimonies are not admissable, because they are property of this corporation, but stolen e-mails, that are also property of this corporation, are totally admissable?
Also lawyer ex-girlfriend saying that there is nothing they can do for Nathan until they get the law changed is bullshit. You can fight this in the courts, ultimately going to the surpreme court. It's one thing upholding laws saying some 1s and 0s on a computer screen aren't humans, it's another when you have a pretty, white (I wish those weren't factors, but they are) guy standing right in front of your bench.
I think the writers should have gotten a law-consult.
And to Nora and Nathan: I mean guys, if you have the documents, you can just leak them to the press. The lawyers might not be able to, but nothing is stopping you. These documents show homicides in hundreds of cases (since Freeon never intended to follow through on their part of the contract, the contract is void, which means lasering somebodies head off is murder) and attempted homicide in thousands of cases.
As with anything having to do with the legal system in a TV show or movie, there has to be a fair amount of handwaving.
But in a normal lawsuit, there is a process called discovery where each side gets to ask questions of witnesses for the other side and to demand that they produce documents, subpoena documents from third parties, etc. Against this background, Holden's firm should have certainly asked for some of the documents that Al managed to steal and obviously did not get them.
Failing to turn over documents can be punished in a lot of ways, and at least hypothetically could lead a judge to allow otherwise admissible documents to be considered. The impropriety of stealing the documents could hypothetically be considered lower than withholding them.
Putting that aside, as others have said, Holden's hands were supposedly clean as to the documents and it was not established in what we saw in court that they were not legitimately obtained from a whistleblower. The show glossed over exactly what the documents were and what they said, just basically that they are a terabyte of sketchiness that purportedly came from Karina. So they may show that Freeyond didn't ever plan on uploading anyone, they may not. (Again, Our Heroes should have been able to point out that Freeyond did not have the infrastructure to do any uploading because they knew that before Al's document dump, and Holden should have been able to follow up on that to make at least some connection as to why Freeyond was operating as such a scam).
We don't get to see Horizen checking with Karina to see if she went whistleblower or if she was the victim of a hack or what. But they presumably could confirm that the documents are genuine. Even if they brought a motion to suppress the evidence at trial and succeeded, they may have reasoned it was a better bargain to settle with the plaintiffs in the class action and lock them under a confidentiality clause in the settlement.
As you pointed out, this in no way should make the problem of these documents go away. Al and co still have access to the terabyte of sketchiness and can duplicate it as many times as they want and send it to whoever they want.
Fighting for the rights of uploads in the court would be an attempt to change the law, in addition to having Congress pass new laws. It would seemingly be an uphill one. The uploads and/or their families signed contracts that they were entirely the property of Big Upload. There presumably has been precedent allowing Big Load to operate the way it has for a while. To the extent the Upload universe is basically supposed to be our universe with higher tech in the not-so-distant future, the U.S. Supreme Court is not particularly likely to side against Big Upload, even if the pro-upload rights side march out Nathan as an appealing white male poster child.
But even assuming for argument's sake that there would be a shot to win a such a court victory, it's clear Holden and co. aren't particularly interested in being the ones to do it. They go where the money is. And it would cost a lot of money to fight this hypothetical court challenge, and it would take a long time. Even if you were guaranteed a victory, which you obviously wouldn't be, getting uploads declared as sentient beings doesn't easily translate into money for them or for the firm. Which is why Holden's firm has zero interest in trying to pursue such a route.
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On 11/12/2023 at 12:04 PM, iMonrey said:
So that's it huh? Only eight episodes when the previous two were ten each? Ripoff.
I still enjoyed the season but yeah, it's got some problems. I don't know how Ingrid can afford Nathan's upkeep at Lakeview on what is probably a minimum wage job. Nora and Nathan think Nathan will be OK because the scientist deliberately sabotaged the first download, but more recently we've been told they've been experimenting on pigeons and about 40% of them ended up exploding. One right on Aleesha, and we saw it. So why are they so confident Nathan is OK?
What happened to Luke? At the end of the previous episode it was like his room was shut down, or he was downgraded or something. Not sure what Karina did to him, and there was no follow-up.
There are a lot of things that don't make a lot of sense, I just try not to think about them too much.
Ingrid is presumably able to maintain some level of the upkeep on keeping Nathan going through one of several ways: a) having prepaid for a bunch of it when she had access to family money b) blackmailing the one angel to sneak her stuff and c) her job. I'm willing to consider that being a VR Suit rental clerk pays better than minimum wage, as VR Suits are more of a luxury good.
Presumably the doctor's admission that he had sabotaged the first human download means that as a corollary he and others were setting up pigeons to die after being download recipients.
Luke was telling Karina about all the hacks that he was doing to scam Horizen, one of which was accessing a premium version of Lakeview for free. Karina was basically passing along every one of his hacks to the consulting team that Ingrid-as-Nora was on and shutting them down. So that's why the next morning Luke realized his free premium Lakeview had been shut down and came to the conclusion that Karina was truly evil for having closed up the loopholes he told her about.
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On 11/19/2023 at 11:46 AM, iMonrey said:
Those are the 2 gigs. It's an interesting idea the show never really fleshed out or explained very well.
Initially I got the impression there were different upload communities, and Lakeview was just the fanciest, most expensive one the rich people got into. But eventually with the introduction of Freeyond (or whatever it was called) it seemed more like Lakeview was the only upload facility.
So it doesn't really make a lot of sense, from a business standpoint, that you could be rich enough to get into Lakeview but then run out of money and be downgraded to a 2 gig. Seems more likely they would just pull the plug on you, or that the upload fee is paid up front without ongoing charges.
My understanding:
There are various companies in the business of uploading people, of which Horizen is the biggest. As Verizon is for cell phones, Horizen is for uploading people and creating virtual spaces for people to visit simulations of their loved ones. Freeyond was set up as an alleged rivals to all the fancy and expensive upload companies even though it was in reality a sham that was being used by the expensive upload companies.
Lakeview has been presented as Horizen's own upload community. By implication, the other upload companies have set up their own servers and their own upload communities. It may be that Horizen has other communities beyond Lakeview, but we haven't been shown any separate ones.
The 2 Gigs are on a plan where you only have limited access to the uploads and the uploads only have limited ability to do things. They are in the virtual basement of Lakeview. Presumably, Horizen sells different parts of Lakeview and different packages based on what they can afford. Got $1000 a month you're willing to pay (say)? You can go for the Horizen 2G platform and visit virtual nana in black and white one time a month, and know that she has the chance to do basic things that don't take up that much bandwidth, like read books or hang out with other 2Gs. Or if you want to pay a million a year, you get the full country club experience where your simulated loved one will have an attentive staff at your beck and participate in all sorts of experiences not allowed in the real world.
As for going from one plan to the other, it seems likely that for some people, they may start off only able o afford 2G and then get enough money or drive to afford a better package, or vice-versa.
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On 11/11/2023 at 7:06 AM, Paloma said:
I also liked Ingrid better this season, but I don't understand what Nora said to her to make her willing to testify. And I'm still unclear on why her testimony was so crucial. Actually, I'm unclear on what the overall trial was intended to accomplish. I know that the lawyer (Nathan's ex) said they won because they got a lot of money for the families, but was the main issue in question at the trial?
So here's my attempt to explain what was at stake in the trial. Apologies if I get anything wrong:
Holden and her firm filed a class-action suit against Horizen for the disaster in which people coming for free uploads at Freeyond were lost in a supposed Luddite attack. Freeyond was set up as a more democratic and economically affordable alternative to Big Upload, and was setting up stores in major cities across the country. In reality, Big Upload (Horizen and a couple other competing yet collaborating firms in the same space) organized Freeyond, and deliberately sabotaged the uploads of people to shift voting patterns in the hopes that a bill allowing Uploads to work would pass, which would make them all mega-super-rich instead of just merely rich, because when you have basically an army of VR slaves who owe their continued existence to you, what can't you get them to do? And how much could you sell their labor for?
So Holden was attempting to show that Horizen/Big Upload was truly behind the disastrous Freeyond that led to what were presumably hundreds if not thousands of deaths.
Anyway, though our heroes know this conspiracy to be true, they can't use any of the direct proof they have toward it. Both Nathan 1.0 and Backup Nathan are the intellectual property of Horizen and apparently can't be used against it. (Which is some hand-wavy BS IMO because the discovery process would allow to seek records from the company, even those that are covered by intellectual property protection. They could just ask for access to Nathan 1.0's file and get him to testify that way.). But the same thing goes for David Choak,
I can't think of a very good reason why a competent investigative team knowing what Our Heroes know and with access to scan the entirety of David Choak's memory could not determine many, many legit ways to show the conspiracy that existed. Yes, the one doctor that they found as a witness got blown up real good, for instance. But there is presumably a whole chain of evidence that having talked to him would have opened up.
But for show purposes, the only connection that they can make is having Ingrid testify that she knows that her father was in cahoots with Smoak, thus linking the software that Nathan developed to Big Upload.
Ingrid is of course a very shaky foundation on which to build a case. As much as we have seen the show humanize her, she is a) not the smartest person in the room b) a chronic liar, including having been pretending she was dead for a substantial period of time to fool her boyfriend c) at odds with her family after having been cut off financially, giving her a potential motive to strike back at them by lying d) a VR addict.
What Nora tells Ingrid is basically: this case could lead to the Uploads getting recognized as having rights. Right now your boyfriend is a bunch of code that Horizen can do what it wants with, and he won't be free, and you won't really be free to be with him until we stick it to Horizen.
Instead of cross-examining Ingrid on any of the above weaknesses, the Big Upload lawyer seizes on Ingrid inadvertently letting it slip that there are two Nathans. I'm not really sure why this would be an effective trial technique but whatever.
So it comes down to Al, who hacks her girlfriend Katrina and is able to come up with a terabyte of sketchiness that they are able to send to the plaintiffs' lawyers under the theory that Karina sent it as a whistleblower. Obviously she did not, and presumably if this were a real trial, Holden would have to explain where she got these records from, Karina would be able to say that these records were stolen, fake or whatever. But the Horizen decides to settle for what, it seems to me, is pretty much chump change. A class action lawsuit in which (I think) 140ish families clear $1 million each is pretty small ball.
The thing I don't like in addition to Holden acting like this is a great settlement for her clients when (presumably) they have some level of evidence of Horizen deliberately killing people to sway the results of an election is that Our Heroes are like "Man, sorry this lawsuit didn't expose what corruption there is with Horizen." They still have the terabyte of sketchiness that Horizen was up to. And even if Holden agreed to a confidentiality order, it couldn't possibly stop Al or others from not shipping that terrabyte of information to journalists, the Internet, government regulators, etc.
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2 hours ago, North of Eden said:
Ah yeah, Kellie takes the crown for the sourest juror....ever. I guess she's going to bitch face her way all the way to the finale and it was ridiculous blaming Bruce for her sitting there when he was one of the few people that didn't vote for her.
In Kellie's defense, what she said was his winning immunity is the reason why she is a juror. And that's seemingly true. If there had been the option to vote Bruce out last time around, pretty much everyone but Bruce would have voted for him. She had a sour tone about it, but facts are facts.
2 hours ago, dancingdreamer said:WTG Bruce, I'm so glad he won immunity, I'm still not seeing what's so bad about him.
Let's see...he's a condescending, patronizing mansplainer who has been acting as though the 12ish hours of playing Survivor more than the other contestants makes him more skilled and more worthy than them and a celebrity in his own mind. He tries to browbeat people about everything in a game where being too bossy is typically the kiss of death. He doesn't seem to have cultivated a single actual ally, and has had little awareness of how the game is progressing around him. Other than winning these two immunities, he seemingly has done nothing to make him worthy of being the Sole Survivor.
But other than THAT, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
1 hour ago, iMonrey said:I didn't mind the three group immunity challenge, it all amounts to the same thing. But three people losing their votes when there are only nine left is utterly stupid. There's no way I could have solved that math problem in three minutes. I could have done it eventually but it probably would have taken me a couple of hours.
I don't claim to think that I would have gotten it in 3 minutes, especially under the same conditions of the Survivors.
But hours seems a little much, given the parameters
It's the numbers 9-1 in sequential descending order and exactly 3 pluses and a single minus must be added. In less than an hour and probably less than 30 minutes, you should be able to come up with most of the relevant permutations of that. For instance, it seems unlikely that you can go more than two digits without a symbol since it seems like that would either put you way over or way under 100. Starting off 987 means you will never get back down to near 100 with only one minus symbol in the equation 987-654+3+2+1, for instance. And even +321 means that you're not likely to get in the vicinity of 100 with just one minus sign. 9+8+7-654+321 is going to be a negative number.
Once you figure out that you can't go more than two digits without an operation, you should quickly figure out it can't be 98+X because pretty much anywhere you put the two additional plus signs will not make it work.98+76 is obviously going to be too big a starting point to get to exactly 100 with two more additions to put in the mix. 98+7-65+43+21
Once you realize it starts off 98- and you can't go more than 2 digits without a new sign, it's not that tough. 98-76=22, 22+54=76+3+21=100. 98-76+5+43+21 doesn't get you there (91), nor does 98-76+54+32+1 (109).
48 minutes ago, PaperTree said:I assume Jeffy read all 7 votes so they'll know somebody on that journey was lying.
I assume the opposite and he only read what was shown. A savvy player might realize that by saying "That's four, that's enough" means that there might be/are additional votes. I do not know if it is customary for him to read off every vote beyond what is necessary to vote someone off.
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5 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:
Ny was said in-show to be the most powerful channeler in 1000 years iirc. Which isn't saying much for the rest.
I mean, Ny has participated in two pretty undeniable and unbelievable shows of power: she brought a whole bunch of people back from the dead (or mostly dead) when the fake Dragon was running roughshod over them and she (with the help of Eg and a few other channellers wiped out a whole Trolloc army at the end of last season.
It seems like the main downside is she is largely incapable of originating these uses of power just at will but needs to be in a heavily emotional state. She seemingly can't even do simple things. Once she gets through whatever mental/emotional block she has (presumably something having to do with her hating/distrusting Aes Sedai), it seems like she will be formidable.
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21 hours ago, Shermie said:
Maybe it’s an Emily/Bruce final two. I don’t watch much anymore - is it final two or final three now? He seems to be getting a lot of screen time and a lot of commentary about him from others.
Emily vs Bruce, I can see why she wins because she played herself to the end. Bruce just seemed to annoy many of them.
It seems like they have been a F3 for most of the recent seasons of Survivor. There is an immunity challenge at 4, and the winner guarantees one person to make it to the F3, and the other two have a race to build fire to get to the F3.
I suppose nothing would stop them from changing things up and doing a F5-F2. But in a vacuum, no reason to think that they will switch it up.
On 11/20/2023 at 12:50 AM, SVNBob said:She did have the quote in a TH in the first episode saying that she'd either be the first out or the winner. (I remember this because I quipped at the time that I then wanted her to be the last out before the jury, as that would probably hurt the most.) And since she wasn't the first out....
I think her quote was she'd prefer to be either first out or the winner, rather than a prediction that she'd be one of the two. Since that was back when I thought she was a terrible person, I too was hoping that she makes it to the F3 and goes voteless. Now that I've warmed up to her some, I would be fine with her winning. I'd also be fine with her becoming a super bitter juror too.
On 11/19/2023 at 5:01 PM, PaperTree said:Me too! Mr. 27 Advantages is getting a good edit too. I just don't feel the Austin love. Too much smarmy smugness.
Is Bruce getting the goat edit, or does he somehow win?
It's interesting...it seems to me that there are very few entries so far on anyone's Survivor resumes in general. Dee and Bruce have an immunity win apiece, Bruce has an idol, Austin has two idols...not sure if anyone else has anything.
Emily has the "I'm an underdog" story she can tell. Started off on a tribe that was full of losers and went to tribal council more than anyone remaining in the game. Despite having no connections originally with Reba or Belo, and despite her only fellow Lulu getting kicked off just after the merge, if she manages to survive to the end, that could be an appealing story.
Bruce has the "I came back from the heartbreak of being medavaced last season to compete this one, and I showed my stuff and kept the tribe's spirits high with dad jokes and good advice" argument.
Drew and Austin have the "We are very strategic players who maximized all the advantages we earned" argument.
Jake now has the "I convinced you to get rid of Kellie instead of me, and I survived despite medical issues" argument.
Aside from the "I won an immunity with my freakish feet," I am not sure what Dee has.
I'm not sure what Julie, Katurah or Kendra have to say for themselves.
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S03.E02: Part Two - Disengage
in Star Trek: Picard
Picard and Riker were hoping to capitalize on it being the big Federation holiday to make it seem as though the Federation would allow a big shot like him to have a ceremonial role and do what he wants. The idea was that normally a captain might fanboy over Picard and do what he wants in such a situation. A gambit that might have worked if Captain Shaw was less careful and or antagonistic.
By contrast, in previous times there was no cover story for why Starfleet might just give even a momentary command of a starship to an ex-Admiral, and there would have been plenty of reasons for a random captain to call the bluff if they tried to use it.