Zeke has had time for repairs. He did capture his old master and all the minion bots. Who’s to say he hasn’t pulled a Skynet/Voltron and can transfer a copy of himself into any of the bodies now? Now THAT’S a huge worry! Picture 100 Zeke’s and they are ALL pissed off!
That was discussed in a pre-explosion back room scene. Ethan got Zeke access to the Internet, Zeke bought themself a pair of pants, and the two of them discussed things including the idea of Zeke uploading their consciousness to the Internet*, but it was way too advanced at that point.
*Or maybe it was between Ethan and Scott, but either way, it was a scenario that didn’t look likely with existing tech.
Jedi
6 months ago
Was this the 7 genius seconds of Ethan of the Day ? – Oh i forgot, that was CAD 1.0 🙂
Oyee
6 months ago
That was surprisingly clever. I forget superhero stuff also covers investigation so it’s cool that it has come up.
nb_gamer
6 months ago
Love the detail of Ethan remembering Zeke’s preffered pronouns and Scott using “It” for them, makes you realise who respects who
It’s an ongoing detail that Tim has stuck with. As a trans person who has had to argue the importance of correct pronouns many times, it’s actually upsetting to see – but in a way that’s realistic, not in an “I don’t think it should be written like this” way.
I would really like to see Scott being called out on it though
While I see your point, I think this is not the case of correct pronouns, but recognising Zeke as a person in the first place. (hence “they”, not related to any gender, since they are a robot, versus “it”, used to refer to an item/object)
Like, someone referring to you with a wrong pronoun (either intentionally or out of lack of awareness) likely still recognises you as a person. While “it”, that Scott uses when referring to Zeke is… depersonazing? (“dehumanizing” doesn’t sound right in this context, as Zeke is not human in the first place)
“someone referring to you with a wrong pronoun likely still recognises you as a person.”
More than a few people see trans individuals as non-existent, not human, or sub-human. While I won’t call it the same thing, it has very similar markers to experiences that people of color had before MLK (and even now in some cases).
First of all, I do these things no problem. I’ve got multiple people with changing identities in my environment, and especially in mental transition periods it was even normal to ask as what they were feeling as today. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a difficult topic. What I have difficulty with is that it is forced. In this particular case, Scott has been of the view that Zeke is merely a complex robot, not a person. It is what he sees and acts on. From Scott’s perspective, that Zeke claims emotions and to be alive is as if a toaster… Read more »
If we recognise Zeke as a person, I think we can. As somewhat relevant example, the N-word has racist connotations when used to refer to Black people in current times. In the past society, which didn’t recognise them as equal (and considered it okay to keep Black slaves), that word was probably considered normal to use. Yet if someone used it now, we wouldn’t be okay with that. So, similarly, if truly self-aware robots would be considered people and equal to humans, calling them “it” would not be any more okay, than usign any sort of racist slur. Especially when… Read more »
The thing is recognizing black people as “also human” instead of “lesser humans” or “slaves” is something different than recognizing something inorganic as human. Now it’s different with Zeke cuz tho he’s a robot he’s shown a range of emotions from his first appearance where he has shown pride, arrogance and anger. But one can say this is programmed or he has learned these emotions (again cuz he’s programmed). I just tried to ask chatgpt to write an angry letter of resignation and I got an “can’t comply” but again it’s cuz there are restrictions on the program. The movie… Read more »
“To force him to use ‘they’ would be to invalidate his world view. ” This is where things can get messy, because this is a work of fiction in which sentient AI seems impossible, just like in our real world. And in our real world, there are people who feel like the idea of someone being transgender is impossible / mentally unstable / etc, but those people have decided to close their minds to anything outside of their small understanding of how the world works. Trans people exist, are valid, and have place this world, so arguing that it’s invalidating… Read more »
Just over two years ago there was someone asking about singular they and neopronouns and I did my best to explain, as I’m they/she and a friend of mine is ze/hir.
They thanked me for the explanation and my time 🙂 It was very nice.
anyway I celebrated my 2 year HRT anniversary a couple weeks ago <3 I guess the interaction helped me decide. and WOW am I glad I did.
I mostly take it as Scott having issues separating his mind from the “logical” engineer’s mindset that comes with working with code from the “illogical” of Zeke’s proven sentience and what that means for the random nature of life. I think he very well can learn to relent from what he believes should be regarding artificial intelligence to what is, the fact that Zeke is just as intelligent and feeling as any organic being even with the initial threats, as they were arguably mostly out of fear and hostility being just the only thing they knew. He’s stubborn, which i… Read more »
Ethan sees Zeke as a person, Scott sees a kill-bot, nothing more. Tell the truth everyone, if you met a Boston Dynamics humanoid robot that started to interact with you or try to talk to you, it’d make you awkward and nervous, wouldn’t it? Personally, I would be careful until I was sure it wouldn’t react badly, or could convince me it was safe and friendly. RL ‘bots only do what they are programed to do, so it’s the programming/programmer, not the ‘bot you would worry about. Zeke is special, not only is he self-aware, but can “reprogram” himself on… Read more »
Yeah! I sympathize with Zeke a lot because they’re NB and a fantasy AI person, etc. But I absolutely sympathize with Scott too. I think he’s being very reasonable with the information he has (though keeping the bomb a secret from his friends was likely a mistake). He has VERY good reason to be concerned! He’s the most qualified to make that call!
Scott wasn’t keeping the bomb hidden, but he did conveniently “forget” to reset the trigger point to a larger area as Lucas had told him to do. They were keeping the bomb being active from Ethan however. I’ll have to do a re-read to be sure, but I believe they told Ethan it was deactivated completely, but Scott convinced Lucas to keep it from Ethan that he had activated it and set the trigger point to just outside the store room.
Peter
6 months ago
Considering Ethan's fear of death, wouldn't using seatbelts be appropriate?
Every normal person uses ‘they’ as a singular pronoun, you dolt.
Random Person One: “Can my friend come over for dinner?”
Random Person Two: “Sure, do they like pizza?”
or
Random Person One: “I’ve got an idiot in my comments section.”
Person Two Who Doesn’t Know The Gender Of Aforementioned Singular Commenter: “Point out what an ass they’re being, maybe they’ll stop.”
Absolutely true, though your examples (as great as they are) are referring to an unknown person. And while it’s hard to tell the gender of an android like Zeke, I think it should be said as well this also applies to a known person, if they so prefer.
Who knows? Maybe they will replace he/she completely in time, like plural you replaced singular thou. Maybe in the future people won’t refer to other people by what they imagine their genetalia look like.
Sure, but it’s the easiest way to prove that they/them can be used in a singular context. Discussion about trans / gender-non-conforming individuals aside, no one I’ve ever know has ever used “they” to describe someone they know is a man/woman. But since the pronoun pair can be used in an unknown singular context, it can also be used in a known singular context with non-binary or NB-adjacent people.
As long as reflexives are appropriately singular or plural. Most people (in my experience) always use “themselves” no matter what. If “themself” isn’t a word now, it sure should be.
Well, heck – found myself an OED: “The looue of neȝhebores, and man and womman wel to themself consentende” from the frickin’ Wickliffe Bible, back in the late 14th century.
Cool AF.
in fact, based on what’s been written on etymonline, they has had plural and singular case uses for longer now than it originally existed as just plural case
zeke is an it, regardless of any sentience achieved. and i will probably get flamed and downvoted over this coment, but that will prove my point anyways.
This is a series where there is a villain who can open eldritch portals to summon massive tentacles while fighting a woman who can crush the top of a building but a sentient robot deciding how they prefer to be referred to is where you draw the line?
not even preferring, this dolt is arguing over the general all purpose use of they and wanting to connect it to something else just for the sake of hate bait.
…How does that prove your point? Kinda seems like you just want negative attention. So here you go, enjoy 🙂
I actually respect Scott’s stance on Zeke even though I strongly disagree. But he doesn’t think Zeke’s sentient. You’re saying it doesn’t matter. That makes no sense.
Scarsdale
6 months ago
Gang, you’re forgetting the last time we saw Zeke, he took control of the minionbots AND captured his old “Master”. I’m sure by now he’s repaired himself and is physically functional. Now his mental state is another matter. Like in real world, even if the brain has healed, it’s function isn’t restored. Robots were never meant to have feelings and a desire to survive, who knows what kind of thoughts and plans Zeke has now.
That got me thinking. If Zeke really is building an army, they might not necessarily do it out of any malevolent plans, but the desire to protect themselves, as they have reasons to distrust humans, and might not much believe in coexistence with them.
Plus it’ll bring up the idea of if those robots can have the ability to develop as well, since Zeke did state that their mind was their own, it implies the Master’s other creations might not have that same capacity, but maybe there’s room for them to discover themselves too?
Well, Zeke did often talk about “kill all humans” in CAD 1.0. So we are seeing what came of it if the situation was reversed, someone else built him, made him want to kill humans, and the guys’ free Zeke of that.
One thing that is also often forgotten is that using an apostrophe + s with a name makes it possessive, but just like other pronouns, “it’s” means “it is” instead of being possessive like “its”
now you got me thinking zeke is gonna hurt ethan, make a comment about him just reviving, ethan saying maybe not, and zeke having a panic attack
Tim Tucker
6 months ago
Maybe I’ve just been spending too much time with contrast checker for accessibility or my eyes are just getting old, but the grey in the comment boxes seems it could use to be at least a little darker.
WCAG standards call for contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for blocks of text.
WebAIM says #777777 on #FFFFFF is a contrast ratio of 4.47:1
Looks like the default for the editor components was originally #666666 (contrast of 5.74:1) and it’s being overridden by the styles on the site.
Have you met Dark Reader? You can customize the background colors per site to your liking 🙂
The extension’s available for Firefox on Android and many browsers on PC. (I don’t know about iOS)
Plugins aside, it’s best to not alienate those with vision impairment (or require them to customize settings for a site they may be newly visiting), so it’s reasonable for someone to suggest it be looked at.
Okay. Prediction time:
-They go in, Zeke is there.
-Zeke sees Scott, goes berserk, tries to kill him
-Ethan sacrifices himself to save Scott
-Scott freaks out, Zeke finds out Ethan might have lost his powers and might be dead
-Zeke freaks out over killing the one human who treated him as a friend
-Scott sees robot experiencing emotion and goes “OH SHIT, HE WAS RIGHT!”
barto
6 months ago
Noting that Ethan say “Them” and Scott say “It” still. Great writing is upon us.
Nate
6 months ago
So uhhh we not doing seatbelts in this universe or…?
24
Clever
Clever. Could have been searching all this time specifically any areas without beacon coverage.
That makes the assumption that Zeke did not leave the city. If Zeke had left the city, all that searching would have been wasted time.
Suddenly he’s sherlock Holmes when a friend is in trouble…
Everyone has something that will motivate them.
Concern for a close friend or loved one is always a great motivator.
The life is full of surprises
Cant Ethan remember? Zeke can swim. In a older strip where they blast it with EMP and Zeke took his glove. It jumped into the ocean and escaped
Damaged robot with waterproofing is still damaged robot with no waterproofing.
Might not be entirely waterproof right now though
Zeke has had time for repairs. He did capture his old master and all the minion bots. Who’s to say he hasn’t pulled a Skynet/Voltron and can transfer a copy of himself into any of the bodies now? Now THAT’S a huge worry! Picture 100 Zeke’s and they are ALL pissed off!
That was discussed in a pre-explosion back room scene. Ethan got Zeke access to the Internet, Zeke bought themself a pair of pants, and the two of them discussed things including the idea of Zeke uploading their consciousness to the Internet*, but it was way too advanced at that point.
*Or maybe it was between Ethan and Scott, but either way, it was a scenario that didn’t look likely with existing tech.
Was this the 7 genius seconds of Ethan of the Day ? – Oh i forgot, that was CAD 1.0 🙂
That was surprisingly clever. I forget superhero stuff also covers investigation so it’s cool that it has come up.
Love the detail of Ethan remembering Zeke’s preffered pronouns and Scott using “It” for them, makes you realise who respects who
It’s an ongoing detail that Tim has stuck with. As a trans person who has had to argue the importance of correct pronouns many times, it’s actually upsetting to see – but in a way that’s realistic, not in an “I don’t think it should be written like this” way.
I would really like to see Scott being called out on it though
While I see your point, I think this is not the case of correct pronouns, but recognising Zeke as a person in the first place. (hence “they”, not related to any gender, since they are a robot, versus “it”, used to refer to an item/object)
Like, someone referring to you with a wrong pronoun (either intentionally or out of lack of awareness) likely still recognises you as a person. While “it”, that Scott uses when referring to Zeke is… depersonazing? (“dehumanizing” doesn’t sound right in this context, as Zeke is not human in the first place)
Depersoning would be the word you are looking for, I think. Seems to be a lesser used word, but does seem to be in some online dictionaries.
“someone referring to you with a wrong pronoun likely still recognises you as a person.”
More than a few people see trans individuals as non-existent, not human, or sub-human. While I won’t call it the same thing, it has very similar markers to experiences that people of color had before MLK (and even now in some cases).
First of all, I do these things no problem. I’ve got multiple people with changing identities in my environment, and especially in mental transition periods it was even normal to ask as what they were feeling as today. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a difficult topic. What I have difficulty with is that it is forced. In this particular case, Scott has been of the view that Zeke is merely a complex robot, not a person. It is what he sees and acts on. From Scott’s perspective, that Zeke claims emotions and to be alive is as if a toaster… Read more »
If we recognise Zeke as a person, I think we can. As somewhat relevant example, the N-word has racist connotations when used to refer to Black people in current times. In the past society, which didn’t recognise them as equal (and considered it okay to keep Black slaves), that word was probably considered normal to use. Yet if someone used it now, we wouldn’t be okay with that. So, similarly, if truly self-aware robots would be considered people and equal to humans, calling them “it” would not be any more okay, than usign any sort of racist slur. Especially when… Read more »
The thing is recognizing black people as “also human” instead of “lesser humans” or “slaves” is something different than recognizing something inorganic as human. Now it’s different with Zeke cuz tho he’s a robot he’s shown a range of emotions from his first appearance where he has shown pride, arrogance and anger. But one can say this is programmed or he has learned these emotions (again cuz he’s programmed). I just tried to ask chatgpt to write an angry letter of resignation and I got an “can’t comply” but again it’s cuz there are restrictions on the program. The movie… Read more »
“To force him to use ‘they’ would be to invalidate his world view. ” This is where things can get messy, because this is a work of fiction in which sentient AI seems impossible, just like in our real world. And in our real world, there are people who feel like the idea of someone being transgender is impossible / mentally unstable / etc, but those people have decided to close their minds to anything outside of their small understanding of how the world works. Trans people exist, are valid, and have place this world, so arguing that it’s invalidating… Read more »
Just over two years ago there was someone asking about singular they and neopronouns and I did my best to explain, as I’m they/she and a friend of mine is ze/hir.
They thanked me for the explanation and my time 🙂 It was very nice.
anyway I celebrated my 2 year HRT anniversary a couple weeks ago <3 I guess the interaction helped me decide. and WOW am I glad I did.
*someone in this comment section. Actually it was page 9 of deposited, I still look at the thread sometimes <3
While it’s not great, Scott has been at least making progress by calling him “Zeke” instead of “the robot”.
It’s definitely more out of his friendship with Ethan than how he actually views Zeke, but… it’s a little inch.
I mostly take it as Scott having issues separating his mind from the “logical” engineer’s mindset that comes with working with code from the “illogical” of Zeke’s proven sentience and what that means for the random nature of life. I think he very well can learn to relent from what he believes should be regarding artificial intelligence to what is, the fact that Zeke is just as intelligent and feeling as any organic being even with the initial threats, as they were arguably mostly out of fear and hostility being just the only thing they knew. He’s stubborn, which i… Read more »
Ethan sees Zeke as a person, Scott sees a kill-bot, nothing more. Tell the truth everyone, if you met a Boston Dynamics humanoid robot that started to interact with you or try to talk to you, it’d make you awkward and nervous, wouldn’t it? Personally, I would be careful until I was sure it wouldn’t react badly, or could convince me it was safe and friendly. RL ‘bots only do what they are programed to do, so it’s the programming/programmer, not the ‘bot you would worry about. Zeke is special, not only is he self-aware, but can “reprogram” himself on… Read more »
Yeah! I sympathize with Zeke a lot because they’re NB and a fantasy AI person, etc. But I absolutely sympathize with Scott too. I think he’s being very reasonable with the information he has (though keeping the bomb a secret from his friends was likely a mistake). He has VERY good reason to be concerned! He’s the most qualified to make that call!
Scott wasn’t keeping the bomb hidden, but he did conveniently “forget” to reset the trigger point to a larger area as Lucas had told him to do. They were keeping the bomb being active from Ethan however. I’ll have to do a re-read to be sure, but I believe they told Ethan it was deactivated completely, but Scott convinced Lucas to keep it from Ethan that he had activated it and set the trigger point to just outside the store room.
seatbelts were used while they were moving, they are currently parked
No normal person uses “they” as a singular pronoun. It is very distracting to read.
Every normal person uses ‘they’ as a singular pronoun, you dolt.
Random Person One: “Can my friend come over for dinner?”
Random Person Two: “Sure, do they like pizza?”
or
Random Person One: “I’ve got an idiot in my comments section.”
Person Two Who Doesn’t Know The Gender Of Aforementioned Singular Commenter: “Point out what an ass they’re being, maybe they’ll stop.”
I’m raising my patreon pledge specifically because of this response. I’m dying! 🙂
Absolutely true, though your examples (as great as they are) are referring to an unknown person. And while it’s hard to tell the gender of an android like Zeke, I think it should be said as well this also applies to a known person, if they so prefer.
Who knows? Maybe they will replace he/she completely in time, like plural you replaced singular thou. Maybe in the future people won’t refer to other people by what they imagine their genetalia look like.
Sure, but it’s the easiest way to prove that they/them can be used in a singular context. Discussion about trans / gender-non-conforming individuals aside, no one I’ve ever know has ever used “they” to describe someone they know is a man/woman. But since the pronoun pair can be used in an unknown singular context, it can also be used in a known singular context with non-binary or NB-adjacent people.
As long as reflexives are appropriately singular or plural. Most people (in my experience) always use “themselves” no matter what. If “themself” isn’t a word now, it sure should be.
good news, “themself” has been a word for centuries, despite what auto-correct seems to think
I went ahead and did a quick search because I was curious if there was any publicly available timeline, and found this lovely article: https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/themself
Well, heck – found myself an OED: “The looue of neȝhebores, and man and womman wel to themself consentende” from the frickin’ Wickliffe Bible, back in the late 14th century.
Cool AF.
We get it, Kevin; you are a crummy person. You don’t need to keep rubbing it in.
The use of “they” as a gender neutral singular pronoun has been of accepted use in English for years if not decades. Stop being an ass.
centuries, actually
in fact, based on what’s been written on etymonline, they has had plural and singular case uses for longer now than it originally existed as just plural case
zeke is an it, regardless of any sentience achieved. and i will probably get flamed and downvoted over this coment, but that will prove my point anyways.
This is a series where there is a villain who can open eldritch portals to summon massive tentacles while fighting a woman who can crush the top of a building but a sentient robot deciding how they prefer to be referred to is where you draw the line?
not even preferring, this dolt is arguing over the general all purpose use of they and wanting to connect it to something else just for the sake of hate bait.
Having fun in your echo chamber?
…How does that prove your point? Kinda seems like you just want negative attention. So here you go, enjoy 🙂
I actually respect Scott’s stance on Zeke even though I strongly disagree. But he doesn’t think Zeke’s sentient. You’re saying it doesn’t matter. That makes no sense.
Gang, you’re forgetting the last time we saw Zeke, he took control of the minionbots AND captured his old “Master”. I’m sure by now he’s repaired himself and is physically functional. Now his mental state is another matter. Like in real world, even if the brain has healed, it’s function isn’t restored. Robots were never meant to have feelings and a desire to survive, who knows what kind of thoughts and plans Zeke has now.
Right but Ethan doesn’t exactly know that.
Curious… does that make “building an army” more likely than “seeking out repairs”?
That got me thinking. If Zeke really is building an army, they might not necessarily do it out of any malevolent plans, but the desire to protect themselves, as they have reasons to distrust humans, and might not much believe in coexistence with them.
Plus it’ll bring up the idea of if those robots can have the ability to develop as well, since Zeke did state that their mind was their own, it implies the Master’s other creations might not have that same capacity, but maybe there’s room for them to discover themselves too?
Well, Zeke did often talk about “kill all humans” in CAD 1.0. So we are seeing what came of it if the situation was reversed, someone else built him, made him want to kill humans, and the guys’ free Zeke of that.
One thing that is also often forgotten is that using an apostrophe + s with a name makes it possessive, but just like other pronouns, “it’s” means “it is” instead of being possessive like “its”
now you got me thinking zeke is gonna hurt ethan, make a comment about him just reviving, ethan saying maybe not, and zeke having a panic attack
Maybe I’ve just been spending too much time with contrast checker for accessibility or my eyes are just getting old, but the grey in the comment boxes seems it could use to be at least a little darker.
WCAG standards call for contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for blocks of text.
WebAIM says #777777 on #FFFFFF is a contrast ratio of 4.47:1
Looks like the default for the editor components was originally #666666 (contrast of 5.74:1) and it’s being overridden by the styles on the site.
Have you met Dark Reader? You can customize the background colors per site to your liking 🙂
The extension’s available for Firefox on Android and many browsers on PC. (I don’t know about iOS)
Plugins aside, it’s best to not alienate those with vision impairment (or require them to customize settings for a site they may be newly visiting), so it’s reasonable for someone to suggest it be looked at.
robo eyes! can see color codes!
Okay. Prediction time:
-They go in, Zeke is there.
-Zeke sees Scott, goes berserk, tries to kill him
-Ethan sacrifices himself to save Scott
-Scott freaks out, Zeke finds out Ethan might have lost his powers and might be dead
-Zeke freaks out over killing the one human who treated him as a friend
-Scott sees robot experiencing emotion and goes “OH SHIT, HE WAS RIGHT!”
Noting that Ethan say “Them” and Scott say “It” still. Great writing is upon us.
So uhhh we not doing seatbelts in this universe or…?
They’ve parked. They were both wearing seatbelts a few pages back.
Zeke’s just going through an emo phase, actually