And they shall have content wherever they go.

[miminnehaha]

since Bulletproof aired on the 16th should we not be getting a Very Special Halloween Extra this week?

pretty please with a cherry on top?

I certainly wouldn't object to a Chaz birthday celebration.

Alas. Were it happening, should it not have arrived yesterday?

_{(fingers crossed? who, me?)}

[jimsmyth]

You forget that we had a storm yesterday, and the network pre-empted its normal schedule for live plowcam coverage from North Adams, Massachusetts.

Besides, yesterday wasn't Chaz' birthday.

[Jezabella49]

In addition, there are still over 2 million people up and down the northeast still in the dark.  And cold.

They can't watch with no power, so the episode would have to be rescheduled.

[jimsmyth]

In addition, there are still over 2 million people up and down the northeast still in the dark.  And cold.

They can't watch with no power, so the episode would have to be rescheduled.

Random act of kindness, or cheap ratings ploy?

[Korvar]

In addition, there are still over 2 million people up and down the northeast still in the dark.  And cold.

They can't watch with no power, so the episode would have to be rescheduled.

Random act of kindness, or cheap ratings ploy?

Cheap act of kindness, random ratings ploy.

Random ploy of kindness, cheap ratings act.

I may be lacking sleep.

[Leah Bobet]

We got content, popcorn, caramel corn, hot dogs, soda, cotton candy, peanuts, content--

[Lioness]

Ohhh. That was content. Boy howdy yes.

I has a weep. Not the sad kind either. Or, at least, not entirely.

[InkRose]

I think this calls for another "Oh, *Chaz*..."

[glinda_w]

*gasp*

Oh.

[saoba]

Hands up- who else left their pen in the bathroom?

[eschatonic]

Hands up- who else left their pen in the bathroom?

*raises hand*

That was beautiful. I was expecting it to be all dark and covered with spiky bits and pointy teeth and it wasn't.



....Okay, I am impressed that Reyes deliberately turned a blind eye to this. Survivors talking to each other! God that's like the best research opportunity ever. Shit, they should be advertising for people who are living with weird shit now, before it (or It) escalates into dead people. Make a list of the early signs and go interview first-stage jammers. Head some of them off at the pass. Maybe some of them can be converted (diverted?) into betas with I dunno, therapy? support? removing vulnerable/unstable people from dangerous environments?

I bet in a few months the whole team will be lurking on that board watching other survivors do the woulda-coulda-shoulda bit.

[tylik]

I bet in a few months the whole team will be lurking on that board watching other survivors do the woulda-coulda-shoulda bit.

And yet, can they? Because there might be some pretty major reasons for them to at least appear not to know about these things. It's one of those cross interest bits - they might need plausible deniability, and at the very least it is kind of important not to draw hostile official interest to the grass roots internet support side of thing (hence Reyes' non-response). OTOH, the people who already have some kind of contact - and remember, relatives of people at Idlewood preserving contact is new - meeting at Idlewood makes perfect sense.

And from a psychological standpoint, and from a human decency standpoint, for Chaz to be included among the survivors is the only thing to do. Dear gods, who else has survived that much? And it's damn useful to remind him that he is a survivor, to remind him that he's not a monster.

And yet, the information leaks. The Idlewood staff has to talk, at least some, with the families, so that the measures being taken to contain (and care for) their loved ones make some kind of sense. But there are other survivors, who don't maintain any connection with officialdom, who are connecting on the internet. And there is connection between these groups.

Information wants to be free.

...and meanwhile, there are now places for the friends and loved ones of more recent gammas to go, as they try to understand what is happening. Which could be the best thing ever for our team, especially for what I suspect is Reyes' vision of the team - a lot more room to get in there early and intervene before you get to a massive pile of bodies. The best thing ever, anyway, if you don't care about secrecy.

[tylik]

I guess I should add to the above that I'm assuming that tracking of internet usage is pretty trivial, because, well, it is. Especially for the US Government. On the other hand, there are a broad array of circumvention techniques available - and while these aren't invisible if you aren't Hafs, they are increasingly common among certain groups of people, and politicos and journalists are pretty high on the list.

So, if the WTF are working on the assumption that they themselves are being scrutinized, I'd suspect that if people wanted to follow these things, they'd be best not doing so from work, and not doing so from home would be a good idea too. They might want to look at Tor and various of the encryption techniques. Luckily, Washington DC is more likely than most places to have internet cafes awash with people who care about secure communications.*

* And this stuff isn't that obscure. All of the internet usage on my phone goes through Tor, and I'm just a neurobiologist with some connection to the internet security world. Mostly I do it because a) I support the technology politically b) it amuses me to see Google thinking I'm in random locations all over the world and c) the more traffic, the harder it is to trace anything in the system. Of course, the thing that helps even more is to have a larger number of end points. And at the moment, the US government tends to harass the holy heck out of private citizens that run Tor end points.** (Which works. We aren't running one at home, and that's why. And some point we might put up the bucks to have one hosted in a facility that is sympathetic to the cause and prepared to deal with the problems that result. But, y'know, were it not for the problems of harassment, we'd have set one up on a weekend with hardware we already have, at home, already.) (Oh, and it is possible for an entity that has the ability to track traffic through a high enough proportion of the endpoints to trace Tor traffic. The entities that are likely to be able to do this are fairly thin on the ground, mostly governments, and the US government is at the top of the list of bodies with the access to information that would allow them to do so. It's still *hard*.)
** And, of course, not just Tor endpoints. You might do a tad bit of research on Jacob Appelbaum if you'd like some interesting reading along those lines.

[celticelk]

Is anyone else thinking that this is a catastrophe waiting to happen? All of these people have been up-close and traumatic with gammas, which suggests that many or all of them are carrying the first-stage inoculation.  An additional trauma could kick them off into full-fledged gamma status.  Trauma involving loved ones can initiate conversion (see: Henry Lee Cauthren).  Survivor groups tend to facilitate the formation of close personal bonds.  So we have a bunch of potential gammas who know about the ATCF forming a support group, where the conversion and probable ensuing death of one member could easily kick off a wave of conversions....

...I really can't see this ending well.  Though admittedly, I've been wrong before....

[jimsmyth]

Happy (?) Birthday, Chaz.

We got you an ECR.