News You Can't Use: Pennsylvania Prison Inmate’s Selfie Sparks Investigation

What Jeffrey Mattox posted on Facebook on Jan. 25 is now under investigation.

What could be causing this? Did he post a political opinion that would have been considered far left in 2007 but is now considered hate thought? A tiger selfie? Mild PG-13 nudity? One of the billions of comments, images or "likes" that is forbidden by our ruling plutocrats? As it turns out, the truth is both much less and so very much more. Okay, it's just less.

The problem is Mattox is a federal inmate housed at Lackawanna County Prison and he is not supposed to have a cell phone.

But how can our worst human beings serve their "dime" without that convenience: "I'm in my cell right now. Meet me in the exercise yard near the jungle gym. Yeah, bring that improvised stabbing device." This punishment is unusual and very cruel.

Yet, he posted the following: “This is 170 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal.”

It's hard to get too angry when it's got a Pro Wrestling promo caption. This the body that the women love and the men love...to fear. Cough.

“It’s scary, it’s actually scary because they’re in there for a reason, they’re not in there to play around and how that cell phone got in there, that is the question,” said Colleen Mowery of Carbondale.

Well, I don't know. Maybe Angry Birds is teaching them the ultimate destructive futility of uncontrolled emotions and that one where you crush the candy is good for instilling useful job skills or something.

Mattox posted other pictures of himself, which appear to be snapped inside the prison.

Yeah. One would assume, what with the incarceration and all.

Mattox, who is locked up on drug and assault charges, regularly chatted with friends and family here, telling them to call him or even video chat.

Another non-violent drug offender wrongly imprisoned by a corrupt system. Wait, what did you say the other crime was? Oh.

Thick, solid and tight here in the jug.

This is the latest scandal to hit the Lackawanna County Prison.

Wow, it's almost like putting humans in cages doesn't fix anything.

“I think he’s in good with the guards and guards are bringing, the ones bringing the stuff in, that’s the only way it’s getting in there. Just got to tighten down the security with the guards, maybe clean house,” said Todd Mowery of Carbondale.

This clearly unrehearsed, rambling statement raises many excellent points.

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Apparently there are no mirrors in prison! 

I’m 61 years old and I look in waaaaay better shape than that criminal.

The solution is simple: cheap and easy ‘blocking’ technology could be easily installed.

Sadly, Jail and prison guards are not paid a decent wage and a small percentage of them lose their moral compass and offset their low pay with contraband like cell phones and even drugs.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.    

News You Can't Use: Time Traveling Robots Could Punish ‘Future Crimes’

Need some extra things to worry about? Watched Terminator and/or Minority Report with the sound off in some bar before passing out in your own vomit and are convinced it's some sort of message? Well, you've come to the right place. Today we're going to address the issue of robot time travel and how it will be used to enforce political correctness or keep you from de-tagging mattresses and so forth. A leading expert in Spaceology and Reptilian-American studies has a lot to say about this topic and you would be very wise to heed these insane ramblings.

Privacy expert Brad Templeton warns that artificially intelligent robots could one day comb through digital data left by Internet users and retroactively punish them for “future crimes” that were not detected or considered to be a crime at the time.

I'm no privacy expert, or even especially competent or trustworthy, but I'm pretty sure this would be a "past crime" with no grandfather clause rather than something out of an Austrian bodybuilder plays a android production. Oh well, I guess it's still rather outrageous and shocking. When you're promised time travel and artificial intelligences going back into the past to use the L.A. phone book as a kill list and you get this instead there's going to be a certain amount of foot-stamping and complaining.

During a recent presentation at a Singularity University event

Another Singularity University snob. We all couldn't go to P.O. Box college, Mr. Egg Head.

Templeton, who was the Chairman of the Board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation for ten years, said that the mass recording of our movements, activities and opinions could one day be a treasure trove for technologically sophisticated dictatorships to punish sinners.

Hopefully there will be some attractive and racially diverse teens, possibly with various super powers or archery skills, to battle against this evil.

Noting that AI is still in its very early stages, with facial and speech recognition still relatively primitive, Templeton said that this wouldn’t always be the case and that, “We have to worry about the threat of time traveling robots from the future.”

You pretty much have to. From now on my entire life will be built around the idea of surviving an attack from the robotic weapons of a future dictator sent back in time to prevent me from completing that "Surf Monkeys" review.

Artificial intelligence will eventually surpass the human ability to recognize things, which when combined with today’s obsession of recording everything via social media and the movements of cellphones being tracked, will create a dystopian scenario, according to Templeton.

Do robots dream of electric selfies?

“That’s all being recorded and in the future they’ll be able to analyze that and they’ll be able to ask ‘are you now or have you ever been a member of some strange organization?'” said Templeton.

Have you ever photographed your own buttocks using a bathroom mirror? Don't lie to me, human, I can see everything.

“You are committing sins of the future that you don’t know are sins yet,” said Templeton, illustrating the idea with the example of how Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, a practice that was commonplace at the time yet is condemned today.

Time to send some of that liquid metal back to 1776 to take out one of the founding sinners.

It’s not inconceivable that online speech considered acceptable under today’s free speech laws could also be denounced as “politically incorrect” in future, with the sinner subjected to retroactive fines or re-education.

Yeah, because that's only something that will happen in the far future and isn't already occurring with clockwork regularity.

I saw this great little independent film at the Festival D'Avoriaz...

Most people are smart enough not to post incriminating activities, but our understanding of “right” and “wrong” is through the lens of today’s morality. Will the people of the future agree?”

I like to think the people of the future will spend most of their time silently cursing our names in the hell they've inherited, not scanning decades old "vines" for thought crime.

Full Article.

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He was forced out of Mozilla in 2014 for the crime of opposing gay marriage in 2008.

Also Jean Claude Van Dame 'Timecop' is a closer premise, but definitely got to get this guy out in public more and learn some social skills.

Something tells me stone and papyrus may outlast digital in the long run.

Our lives are a farce.

I was just about to post a snarky comment to this story when a robot from the year 2138 suddenly appeared and said "Don't even THINK about it!"

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.