It’s not woke if all the characters are black. Can you provide some examples of this?
It can feel “woke” if the characters were white and are now black, or if the character’s skin color is paraded around as some virtue signal or trophy. If the skin color of a character breaks an already established rule of the story world (for example, black skinned dwarves or elves in Lord of the Rings), that can also contribute to a “woke” feeling. The established rules of the world or story should not bend around or break just to ensure a diverse skin color of every race in the story.
Nobody complains about Mr. T in the A-Team, Denzel Washington as Robert McCall in The Equalizer, or Samuel L Jackson playing Mace Windu in Star Wars, because the color of their skin is not their only defining quality. They are well written and highly beloved characters that are important to their story, have equally as good acting and dialogue as the other characters in their stories, and are played by actors that are well qualified. Their characters feel like they were always meant to be there, and when they were written into their story, their skin color didn’t matter.
I haven’t watched Wakanda Forever, but I am going to guess it is accused of being woke because it probably tries to push a political message or ideology and doesn’t do a very good job of weaving it into the story (very common for modern Disney). Looking at some of the complaints, it appears to have a similar problem to other modern Disney films, in which women are put on an elevated pedestal and men are left to be bumbling idiots completely incapable of basic human functions. This is the most common complaint I see in the reviews, but I don’t see any specific complaints that every character is black. I’m sure its possible some people might complain about it, though I doubt it is a significant portion of the complaints if I haven’t seen it mentioned in the 100 or so reviews I quickly skimmed through.
I did watch Black Panther, but I don’t remember much about it. I remember the bad looking CG, and there being some points where I felt modern Disney’s political messaging was poorly written and “too obviously preaching to the audience,” for a lack of a better way to put it. Not because all the characters were black in the story that literally takes place in Africa. I do recall noticing that Disney chose only white actors to play all the villain roles in Black Panther, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem but in the context of modern Disney and when you have all the black people as “the good guys” and all the white people as “the bad guys,” that is probably going to be taken by a lot of people as political messaging. I didn’t have any issues with Chadwick, he was a good actor for the role of Black Panther IMO. I was sad to hear about his passing. I don’t recall being particularly irked by any other character than that one girl that was his science assistant (I think, I dont remember fully), but I also only watched the movie once in theaters when it came out. So it has been a while.
That’s not to say people are incapable of being racist, but most of the time something isn’t called woke only because the entire cast is black, unless the story was supposed to have white characters that are suddenly black instead (like the live action Little Mermaid, for example). It needs some other context to be called woke other than just “the whole cast is black.”
While I’ll entertain a discussion on whether equalizer movies are (over)woke for swapping the lead - despite Denzel kill-ing-it and already a national treasure, which will be my rebuttal there - I will not tolerate any blasphemy of mace windu being miscast. Down to the purple lightsaber, it was perfect, and I’m only sad our time was so short with that – I really wanted to see SLJ kicking some seeeerious butt.
And really. Who else but Mr Washington can play Robert McCall now? Affleck as a batman/accountant meld? Lou Diamond Phillips as himself? Nah. Denzel owns it now; he bought it fair and square, and we got the better on that deal.
I agree, Denzel did a phenomenal job. My point was that the story of The Equalizer is so well written, that it doesn’t matter what the skin color of the characters are, the story is equally as compelling with a great actor. The skin color of the character wasn’t considered when writing the story, or it wasn’t important to the story.
I also agree on Mace Windu. The fact that George Lucas let Samuel L Jackson pick the purple lightsaber color himself is a teatament to his importance to George in the story. I have a hard time seeing someone else playing the role, but its possible there is some alternate reality where that role is held by someone else.
I think any really good actor could just as well portray Robert McCall. I certainly think Ben Affleck could do it, as he did a great job in The Accountant. Perhaps not Lou Diamond Phillips, I don’t know much about his acting but I have a hard time seeing it. I could absolutely see a younger Christopher Lloyd or John Malkovich as McCall, though. Even Bob Odendirk, who was great as the main character in Nobody, could probably pull it off as well. But I still do like Denzel’s portrayal. Hes a great actor and I always think he does such a great job in whatever role he plays.
I guess it’s fine as long as you’re connecting with HTTPS. All they can see is the fact that you’re accessing notion’s server, unless they do something like deep packet inspection. Also, I’d recommend using DoH.
Notion implements HTTPS connection, so you don’t need to care about that. If you really want to monitor what’s going in/out your computer, you can use something like Wireshark
Depends on how the traffic is being transported and also depends on your device you’re using.
If the device you’re using (smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc.) was given to you by the school or you gave it to them at some point to connect you or add a program to it…you can safely assume that they can view everything on the device. Either they have remote capabilities and can fully view your screen as if it were you or they have detailed logs that provide information about each process that goes on on the device or both. These logs can be related to things you are doing as well as things the device is doing in the background without your input, such as updating apps.
If the device is one that you bought and own and no one has used it or installed anything to it or you didn’t install any such applications that were required for access, then you are likely on the safer side with a caveat…
When on a network like a WiFi hotspot, everything you are doing that goes across the network, whether it is to connect to local devices on the same network (like a printer or other computer) or it goes through the internet (like logging into Facebook in a web browser or in an app), these packets are being sent over this network and may be picked up by anyone who is also on the network, not just the owners or people who managed the WiFi network like the university’s IT department but also other students or guests who are also connected to the same network.
If you are accessing websites or sending data over the http protocol (www.google.com, for example), this is an unsecured protocol and you can guarantee that all data you type into this website can be viewed by anyone else on the same network with very minimal effort on their part.
But if you are using the https protocol (www.google.com, for example), your packets are encrypted. This doesn’t mean that they can not be viewed by anyone on the network, it just means that anyone who grabs these packets as you send stuff over to this website will need to either use the right key or find a way to break it which usually involves something sophisticated like a quantum computer, which some universities do have, but are unlikely using them for this purpose. But just saying, the capability is there.
It’s easy to see whether the website you are accessing is using http or https if in a web browser like Google Chrome, but it’s difficult if using it in an app because the app doesn’t tell you exactly which protocol it’s using. Most newer apps and websites are using https, but there are some outliers. You can find this out if you do some digging on your device through testing, but it’s time consuming.
Do keep in mind that http and https are only two protocols mentioned and there are vastly more protocols out there for other tasks such as peer to peer networking like in torrents, FTP and SFTP for file sharing, SSH and RDP for remotely connecting to another machine, and much more…
Anyway…sorry for the long comment reply, but this is all to say that it depends.
It’s best practice policy to be careful what you do when on someone else’s network and you know others are on it too because you never know who is on and what kind of tools or technology they have access to. Best to use common sense by not visiting suspicious/sensitive websites/apps on your most used devices or instead using throwaway accounts and devices if doing so, ones that won’t come back to identify you and ones you wouldn’t mind losing if lost. Such as, be careful about incriminating yourself if discussing crimes you’re committing or logging into something like an online banking app or website or checking your crypto wallet on the net.
the laptop is mine. I bought it and it had nothing to do with uni, but during covid they gave us free Microsoft Office access through our univeristy’s email, and on this laptop I have logged to two accounts: my personal one, which is the first one that appears on start > settings > account. If I scroll down to School and work accounts, I have a microsoft account with my univeristy email and password. So I have added that as a microsoft account. And they are both connected. I don’t know how to check what they have access to etc.
about notion: How do I know how I’m navigating it (https etc)? Does it depend on the app (I was on the app installed on my laptop) or what? Is there a way to check now? I sent Notion Support an email but don’t know if they can help or if it depends on me
also let’s assume I have given them access to my device in some way. If I format my laptop, would it be safe? Worried about my phone too cause I’m getting paranoid now haha
Microsoft Office applications are unlikely to give them any of this kind of access. The most they would have is the ability to see the location and IP you sign into the app on, like if you visit London and sign into Microsoft Word there, they may be able to see that location and the IP you were given on the network there. Unless you got this from Microsoft who has built the app, then that’s a different story since they have much greater control over the software than your uni would.
The programs you most are worried about would be things like antivirus or VPN apps that have the ability and known history of tracking and logging events on the machine it’s connected to.
To determine the exact ports you’re using, such as in this app, one of the best ways I’m aware of is to have another deceive on the same network and have a program that listens/sniffs web traffic and then filter just for the device you are using to see what protocols are being used at a given time you’re aware. Time consuming and a bit of a learning curve to know what everything means and what you’re doing, but it works for this purpose.
As for your last reply about formatting the device…you can delete everything and this usually removes any spyware, but not always foolproof. In some rare cases, malware has been installed to the BIOS firmware, then no formatting of the Windows OS, for example, would fix this. Also, if something like Microsoft Intune was installed to the device, it’s possible that they can bring the computer back up from a restore or they have already backed up everything and can view it at their leisure. But in most cases, formatting is a good way to conceal yourself from prying eyes if you believe you may be compromised.
Notion syncs using https. It’s safe to say that as long as you haven’t specifically installed weird apps (notion is not a weird app) nothing going on on your PC is visible to anyone else.
This is of course, not true of enterprise and school devices, which usually have very powerful antivirus solutions installed that allow the work/school to see whatever you do (though they mostly don’t care, as long as you aren’t causing trouble on the network or doing things that might get them sued)
I have this at home and enjoy it. What will your work use it for?
Resource usage and storage would be the main things to look out for. Octi really does need ssds as hdds will slow it to a crawl, a good amount of ram is nice but not fully a requirement for home use
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