MURDERBOT | 1.01 / 1.10

Everyone knows that there are two ways to get into media these days:

1. A tumblr mutuals indoctrination

2. Blorbo from my other shows was there

3. Hacking your own governor module and bingeing whatever you can find on the company media feeds to tolerate your shitty job

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Murderbot s1e9

Secunit: ugh i haaaate being a bot/human construct; it's like being handed the worst of the two things. first, they put weapons all over me to murder people at will and brand me  with the company logo like the piece of equipment I am and then make me look human (ugh). the only things these stupid organic parts are good for is giving me anxiety, depression, and making me leak. now, not only am I a terrifying murderbot, i'm also a moody, snarky asshole whom no one wants to associate with. i'm 90% sure of it — my threat assessment module said so.

ART: holy shit, a bot/human construct?! you mean to say not only is this little guy smart as hell, always running a hundred processes in its tiny brain, loves being ten steps ahead of everyone but not in a holier-than-thou way like some ships, it also experiences emotions in a soft, vulnerable way like my beloved humans do?

and only after meeting it I am a step closer to comprehending the intricacies of it all because interacting with this bot-construct and learning how it processes emotions and about its life experiences has opened up a new world of understanding for me, which I never ever ever considered was possible (being the pinnacle of machine intelligence and all) ??

it's like they made it in a factory specifically for me !

on top of all that, it sasses me back in a way no one has ever done before and matches my freak perfectly.

i trust it with my main core and all of my backup processors AND my humans. i'm going to put it in my pocket and travel the star systems forever and ever!

I had never encountered another machine intelligence that I could experience this kind of rapport with before.

which is so heartfelt. and the rapport in question:

I sent back, I wish I could punch you in the face.

ART said, I wish you could try.

That makes me smile every time.

As much as I enjoyed the slightly more gradual buildup to the PresAux crew and Murderbot actually trusting each other in the show, I hope that when Season 2 drops they don’t keep the energy for ART.

ART and Murderbot’s friendship is built on them speedrunning the weirdest fucking relationship stages you can imagine. You can’t make their development slower. I need to see ART going “I know we’ve known each other for a week but you should let me perform surgery on you :)”

No WAIT WAIT fucking WAIT. RoTS happens, Padmé dies, and Sabe steps into her place. She shows up at the senate. No one knows Padmé is dead except a very few people. Vader is loosing his fucking mind all over again. Sabe is playing a very high stakes game but she's not about to let Padmé's life's work die with her

After System Collapse and Rapport, I can't help thinking about how completely and utterly insane ART and Murderbot's first meeting was from ART's perspective.

UplandGatewayOne, the station where they met, is ART's home station. In Mihira and New Tideland's system. Which is deeply anti-corporate. SecUnit even notes at the time that there aren't any security or bond companies there, so nobody should be looking for escaping SecUnits. Iris and Matteo, for all the anti-corporate missions they've been on, have never even seen one, which means Perihelion most likely hasn't either. They're not deployed on transit rings except in GrayCris-paying-to-murder-people situations, and when they are, it's a big deal accompanied by a lot of alarms and screaming and panic.

And one just kind of strolls across the private docks without setting off the weapons scanners. Wholly unnoticed.

So there was already no legitimate explanation for a SecUnit being here. That's point one. Which means it has to have an illegitimate reason.

And ART's paranoia is easily on par with Tarik's, generally speaking. Even though it's never encountered a SecUnit before it has to be aware that this could be an attack by a corporate. Except the SecUnit's got no drones, no additional weaponry, no armor, and it's wearing cargo pants and a hoodie. Which would seem to suggest that it's supposed to be mistaken for a human -- okay, maybe that explains how it got across the transit station a tiny bit? Not really. But at least it accounts for the lack of screaming.

But there's no point in it trying to pretend it's a human now, if this is the prelude to some kind of attack. It's not like ART is a passenger transport, and these are the private non-commercial docks. It can't get on board without trying to hack the lock, and it can't get too far from its handler without frying itself, so it has to do whatever it's doing before ART leaves the transit ring. Whatever attack is coming, it has to be soon. Like, right now, soon.

And it just pings ART directly.

Not even... trying to hide its presence as a potential hostile MI a little.

That is... possibly the most stupid prelude to a code attack it could have made? And if it had been trying to pretend it was human to persuade ART's crew (who aren't even here anyway) to give it access to the ship, it just blew its cover. What the hell is its human handler thinking? They're really bad at this.

And then it asks for a ride--which, again, is hilarious if it thinks it can gain entry that easily--wait. What the fuck? It's offering several hundred hours of entertainment media as a trade.

There is no human handler.

ART doesn't even have to check the governor module at that point. No human would imagine that transports watch television. Possibly, no other bots besides transports would know that they do, because transports are famously not-communicative. Nobody could have instructed it to say that. The only way the SecUnit itself could have gotten the idea that this approach might work is if it tried it before and it was successful.

Okay, so what we know for sure is: This SecUnit is a rogue, and it talks to transports.

And apparently it's hitchhiking?

This raises so many more questions than it answers.

Where the hell did it come from? How did it get across the station without setting off any alerts? Why was it chatting up transports before now? How did it even get several hundred hours of entertainment media downloads? And why the hell would any sentient being, let alone a rogue SecUnit, want to hitchhike to RaviHyral? A crummy little moon which has nothing on it except for mines.

ART's explanation of, "I was curious about you," for letting Murderbot on board is the understatement of the millennium.

This is the equivalent of a frigging walrus ringing your doorbell.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds I Hegemony, Part II

"you can use ai to improve spelling and grammar"

if you’re wondering why spellcheck and grammar check is worse now, it’s because they replaced it with AI! 🥰

now, instead of maintaining a comprehensive, nuanced, and human-maintained encyclopedia by which to check your document, they have switched to an AI that just compares what you’ve written to what other people write in, say, Google Docs, and use the most commonly used iteration.

ever have it change something like “all intents and purposes” to “all intensive purposes” or “should’ve” to “should of”? that’s why!

people make the same spelling and grammar mistakes so often, AI thinks that’s the way you say it because it is a PATTERN DETECTOR and cannot THINK let alone use language.

"you can use ai to improve spelling and grammar"

Superman isn't woke. You're just so evil that you see a man doing acts of kindness and you think it's a targeted political agenda

This but for people this post is talking about. 🤣

Get peer reviewed, bitch.

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.02 Wedding Blue Bells | ID in ALT