I found it incredibly fascinating to read about the protesters' ingenuity in using a donkey to protest without consequence. Drawing a comparison between bots and the donkey was particularly fascinating to explore. When I read the article, I discovered that the protesters came up with the idea in response to protests against their sultan being outlawed. It made me wonder: in a time of intense censorship and the defunding of public media/journalism, is it too far-fetched to think that we will see a rise in bots to protest without consequence?

As a general observation, this textbook gives really seamless explanations for many complicated programming tasks. In my business minor, we learned some basic functions in R, but I found it really difficult to understand the specialized structure and syntax of the code beyond the basic level. Though Python similarly uses the English language, the code and syntax itself feel more straightforward and comprehensible. After some research, I learned that my experience comparing the two programs is common. Python is more widely used in large-scale environments due to being easier to learn. I wonder if this has any trade-offs as the code gets more complex.

This past weekend, I made all my social media accounts private after a friend told me about Grok AI's ability to sexualize any photo. This level of image generation is among the most frightening aspects of modern internet use. The fact that photos of any girl/woman can be sexualized without their knowledge or consent is horrifying and dangerous. More and more, we are seeing how technology, especially AI, is a weapon, and it is incredibly frightening.

I find it interesting that utilitarianism is easily the ethical framework I have been most exposed. In modern media and even day-to-day life, we hear variations of the line: "a small sacrifice for the greater good." In fact, many popular villains or anti-heroes use similar reasoning to justify their own pursuits (Thanos, Green Lantern, Magneto, etc). I think what interests me about utilitarianism is that there is rarely a clear definition of "happiness" or "utility" attached. Who gets to decide what happiness looks like?