The coloniality of desire: Revealing the desire to be seen and blind spots leveraged by data colonialism as AI manipulates the unconscious for profitable extraction on dating apps

In this paper, I argue “ghastly capitalism” provides a better hook for critiquing the economy than “surveillance capitalism” as described by Zuboff (2019). When becoming invisible is experienced as an excruciating form of social death known as a “shadow ban,” surveillance seems more like an endorsement of big tech’s scopophilia than a critique. In addition, the blind spots and amnesia that emerge from shoddy practices of datafaction may be more central to asymmetries of power than an all-encompassing and ubiquitous gaze of surveillance. These blind spots are made bigger by the inscrutability of AI, allowing users, designers, and regulators to turn a blind eye to the historical Whiteness and heteropatriarchy they amplify. I make this argument by scrutinizing AI-driven capitalism in the context of dating apps, where absentminded and superficial thumb swipes inform algorithmic determinations of “thoughtfulness” and “attractiveness,” baking coloniality into the algorithms that influencing how people form intimate relationships today. A note on methods is warranted before elaborating these points.As AI penetrates increasing domains of everyday life, it is working to colonize and manipulate the unconscious for profitable extraction. This makes it important to remedy the harms of AI at the same time as those harms become harder to see. I detail the stakes of this development through an analysis of interviews and Reddit forums of users of dating apps. These apps are prototypical platforms penetrating AI ever deeper into the fabric of everyday life through a process outlined as data colonialism (Abolfathi & Santamaria, 2020; Clement, 2019; Narr, 2022; Romano, 2014; Srnicek, 2016). Data colonialism is a mode of dispossession through the extraction of data that perpetuates values forged during European colonization and its afterlife still felt around the globe (Césaire, 2001; Fanon, 2008; Federici, 2004; Hartman, 2022; Mbembe, 2017; Nandy, 1989; Patterson, 2018; Quijano, 2000, 2007), a mode of domination that has been influentially described as the “coloniality of power” (Quijano, 2000, 2007). As dating apps extract datafied indices of unconscious desire from superficial swipes and subsequently mine this data with dynamic algorithms designed to determine the “thoughtfulness” and “attractiveness” of users (Fellizar, 2015; Powering Tinder, 2019), they compel users to think and behave in ways that perpetuate what I describe as the “coloniality of desire” undergirding this coloniality of power.  Because this coloniality of desire feels like social death to those it renders invisible and generates stereotypes from superficial datafication, I suggest neither the lens of surveillance capitalism nor the individual privacy proposed as its remedy help to imagine how to decolonize dating apps. Instead of the liberal notion of selfhood as emerging through privacy, which was constituted from ideals of freedom borne of parasitic colonizers living off the social death of others (Patterson, 2018), decolonizing dating apps requires leveraging indigenous understandings of selfhood as only flourishing through community entanglements, something that others have forcefully argued is needed in in the context of AI ethics more broadly (Escobar, 2018; Gwagwa et al., 2022; Ricaurte, 2022)

Meditation effects within the hippocampal complex revealed by voxel-based morphometry and cytoarchitectonic probabilistic mapping.

Scientific studies addressing anatomical variations in meditators' brains have emerged rapidly over the last few years, where significant links are most frequently reported with respect to gray matter (GM). To advance prior work, this study examined GM characteristics in a large sample of 100 subjects (50 meditators, 50 controls), where meditators have been practicing close to 20 years, on average. A standard, whole-brain voxel-based morphometry approach was applied and revealed significant meditation effects in the vicinity of the hippocampus, showing more GM in meditators than in controls as well as positive correlations with the number of years practiced. However, the hippocampal complex is regionally segregated by architecture, connectivity, and functional relevance. Thus, to establish differential effects within the hippocampal formation (cornu ammonis, fascia dentata, entorhinal cortex, subiculum) as well as the hippocampal-amygdaloid transition area, we utilized refined cytoarchitectonic probabilistic maps of (peri-) hippocampal subsections. Significant meditation effects were observed within the subiculum specifically. Since the subiculum is known to play a key role in stress regulation and meditation is an established form of stress reduction, these GM findings may reflect neuronal preservation in long-term meditators-perhaps due to an attenuated release of stress hormones and decreased neurotoxicity

Cook Off Study of Combustible Cartridge Cases

Combustible cartridge case (CCC) offers specific advantages over the conventional metallic (brass) case. The CCCs are made of cellulose fibres with suitable explosives to ensure debris-free combustion inside the gun barrel. The presence of explosives in CCC, however, causes increased vulnerability to cook-off. An experimental study of cook-off of CCC was carried out by hot plate technique. Cook-off data for CCC of different compositions and with various cook-off delay coatings was measured. It was found that out of four types of coatings, two gave better results

Study of Brass Obturator Design for Combustible Cartridge Case for 105mm Tank Gun Ammunition

Brass cartridge case provides rearward obturation in the tank gun ammunition where the gun systedt has a sliding breech mechanism. In the case of semi-combustible cartridge case (SCCC) ammunition, obturation is provided by a smal1 metal stub. The mechanism of obturation and obturator design for kinetic energy and high explosive squash heat (HESH), SCCC ammunition of 105mm tank gun have been studied. The dynamic firing results for SCCC ammunition for 105 mm tank gun reveal height 115 mm provides perfect obturation. The ballistic performance of SCCC ammunition is comparable with that of the brass-cartridged round in the pressure range 150-450 MPa

Soliton Dynamics in Computational Anatomy

Computational anatomy (CA) has introduced the idea of anatomical structures being transformed by geodesic deformations on groups of diffeomorphisms. Among these geometric structures, landmarks and image outlines in CA are shown to be singular solutions of a partial differential equation that is called the geodesic EPDiff equation. A recently discovered momentum map for singular solutions of EPDiff yields their canonical Hamiltonian formulation, which in turn provides a complete parameterization of the landmarks by their canonical positions and momenta. The momentum map provides an isomorphism between landmarks (and outlines) for images and singular soliton solutions of the EPDiff equation. This isomorphism suggests a new dynamical paradigm for CA, as well as new data representation.Comment: published in NeuroImag

Providing Multilingual Access to Health-Oriented Content

Finding health-related content is not an easy task. People have to know what to search for, which medical terms to use, and where to find accurate information. This task becomes even harder when people such as immigrants wish to find information in their country of residence and do not speak the national language very well. In this paper, we present a new health information system that allows users to search for health information using natural language queries composed of multiple languages. We present the technical details of the system and outline the results of a preliminary user study to demonstrate the usability of the system

Does wrinkle ridge formation on Mars involve most of the lithosphere

Recent work on the origin of wrinkle ridges suggests that they are compressional tectonic features whose subsurface structure is not understood. Some characteristics of Martian wrinkle ridges are reviewed which suggest that they are the surface expression of thrust faults that extend through much of the lithosphere

Electroconvulsive therapy mediates neuroplasticity of white matter microstructure in major depression.

Whether plasticity of white matter (WM) microstructure relates to therapeutic response in major depressive disorder (MDD) remains uncertain. We examined diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) correlates of WM structural connectivity in patients receiving electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), a rapidly acting treatment for severe MDD. Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS) applied to DTI data (61 directions, 2.5 mm(3) voxel size) targeted voxel-level changes in fractional anisotropy (FA), and radial (RD), axial (AD) and mean diffusivity (MD) in major WM pathways in MDD patients (n=20, mean age: 41.15 years, 10.32 s.d.) scanned before ECT, after their second ECT and at transition to maintenance therapy. Comparisons made at baseline with demographically similar controls (n=28, mean age: 39.42 years, 12.20 s.d.) established effects of diagnosis. Controls were imaged twice to estimate scanning-related variance. Patients showed significant increases of FA in dorsal fronto-limbic circuits encompassing the anterior cingulum, forceps minor and left superior longitudinal fasciculus between baseline and transition to maintenance therapy (P<0.05, corrected). Decreases in RD and MD were observed in overlapping regions and the anterior thalamic radiation (P<0.05, corrected). Changes in DTI metrics associated with therapeutic response in tracts showing significant ECT effects differed between patients and controls. All measures remained stable across time in controls. Altered WM microstructure in pathways connecting frontal and limbic areas occur in MDD, are modulated by ECT and relate to therapeutic response. Increased FA together with decreased MD and RD, which trend towards normative values with treatment, suggest increased fiber integrity in dorsal fronto-limbic pathways involved in mood regulation

Korruption in Deutschland - der Normalfall?

In der letzten Zeit häuften sich auch in Deutschland Vorfälle, die in der Öffentlichkeit den Verdacht aufkommen lassen, es sei Korruption involviert. Dass Korruption in Deutschland zum Normalfall wird, lässt sich zwar nach Ansicht von Prof. Dr. Christian Watrin, Universität zu Köln, nicht ausschließen: »Aber solange für das politische und wirtschaftliche Handeln das Leitbild einer Offenen Gesellschaft bestimmend ist, ist Pessimismus nicht angesagt.« Für Prof. Dr. Dieter Biallas, Transparency International, steht fest ..., »dass sich die verantwortlichen Personen in diesem Land zwar, auch unter dem Druck der Ereignisse, von der Vorstellung verabschieden, Korruption sei vorwiegend ein Problem anderer Länder, man sich aber des Eindrucks nicht erwehren kann, der letzte Wille zu durchgreifenden Reformen sei noch nicht vorhanden, dass vielmehr oft nur auf Skandale reagiert wird.« Impulse für den Kampf gegen die Korruption müssten daher, seiner Meinung nach, auch »von unten« kommen, von Bürgern und Unternehmern, die das Thema zur Sprache bringen und Lösungsvorschläge beisteuern. Für Prof. Dr. Wolf-Dieter Narr, Freie Universität Berlin, ist »korruptiöse Politik ... nicht eine Frage ›schlechten‹ Charakters dieses oder jenes Politikers. Sie ist Ausdruck, Politik mangelhaft zu organisieren.«Korruption, Deutschland