Now I want to do some kind of experiment where I speak things into my phone and see what happens. It still seems too much to be coincidental.

Yes, this is the common statement I am referencing.

How many anecdotal stories before it becomes data? If hundreds of people are saying that this happens and there’s no other explanation? Thousands? How many things can be written off as “Oh, something you don’t understand is happening, even if we can rule out basically everything.” ?

As I said in the original post, the client was contacted by someone over social media about moving to the Phillipines for work. It turned out to be a scam. Nobody else I interacted with made any mention of the Phillipines to me.

I once worked in a charity providing mental health services to people without insurance, or who wanted to not have their insurance record the service for whatever reasons.

I once had a homeless man that I would see regularly. We set up each appointment at the end of the preceding appointment, because the only other way to get a hold of this person would be to call the fast food place he worked at, during his work hours, which weren’t consistent. This man did not own a phone, or any other electronic device. His facebook, and all of his online activity was done at his local library. I emphasize this because I need it to be stressed that there was no way any algorithm could connect his location to mine. There was no way for a system to recognize that his device was near mine, because he did not have a device. There was no way for any of his online habits to be algorithmically connected to mine, at all.

One session, we’re speaking. The only devices in our small, sound proofed room, were my cell phone, a digital clock not connected to any system, and a digital camera, turned off, and also not connected to any system. He mentions that he’s been contacted by someone who wants him to move to the Phillipines. We briefly discuss flights and work in the Phillipines. Then we move on to other things, yadda yadda, end session.

By the end of the day, I’m getting ads on Facebook for flights to the Phillipines. Freaked me the fuck out because those sessions are HIPAA protected. From then on I kept my phone turned off, and in a completely different room in our building than any of my sessions with any patient. Never ever had it happen again.

With the decision that we needed to play the Kingdom Hearts mobile game to fully understand KH3, I’m starting to not like Square telling us we need to play so many different games to get how KH plot was

I have not noticed any meaningful change in the amount of cheating that I experience.

Final Fantasy 12

I had just come off of FFX while running through all the FF games that I could. With FF12, I got to a point where I had a solid amount of freedom and did a bunch of side quests and stuff. Then the next portion of the story takes you to this mountain, and I thought, ah cool, this looks like “new base” material. They lay out new information about the plot and then the next stop is to assault an air ship.

Kick ass, I think. This is probably roughly the story equivalent of the assault on Bevelle from FFX, you go in, fight your way through, a cinematic happens and the thrust of the story changes, new info drops, motivations change and are renewed just like in FFX.

Nope. You get to the boss on that ship, it’s some dude you have little to no investment in fighting. You kick his ass, he transforms, easy fight, and the game just ends.

I sat in actual open mouthed disbelief. There was no way the game ended there, at what I felt was dramatically and game time wise to be the obvious mid point. And yet, there the credits rolled.

I was so disappointed.

We could add the fact that they don’t work to the campaign. Why bother using them if there’s just as much cheating happening?