Annotated 43-9
FB: “You wouldn’t believe how much research went into the discussion of Skype videos on today’s GUILDED AGE. And that’s no joke.”
Xan’s character really shines here. At first, he acts like he’s gonna be a robot all through this encounter, maybe frustrate JJ with his non-reactions. But then he starts throwing shade, hitting at a weakness in JJ we haven’t thought much about: his old-fashioned nature in a field vulnerable to changes in technology.
And then that last panel is like watching a sunrise. Turns out “least emotional” doesn’t mean “unemotional.” Xan does not need to have been Kaye’s friend to feel anger over her death…and it’s her death, not his own injury, that hardens his face as he and JJ speak. He’s here, doing this, because he has a sense of right and wrong powerful enough to risk his own life for. Beware the anger of the quiet man.
An merely angry man might yell or strike you. But a quiet man will decide you need to be ended, and do so with efficiency if motivated enough to do so.
Public service announcement: There are other, free (as in “open”, not necessarily for free) services out there, for all your video and audio conferencing, and social-media-ing needs:
Jitsi for video calls, BigBlueButton for presentations/school (or just regular video calls), Mumble for low-latency time audio (i.e. voice chat during games and such). All of these are actually securely encrypted, and (except for BBB, if you configure it so) don’t leave recordings on the server, or don’t even allow the server to read what’s happening.
And then there’s the entirety of the Fediverse for federated social media, including videostreaming and -hosting (overview here: https://fediverse.observer/) — in almost all respects more privacy-respecting and absolutely always less creepy.
There’s even several services who will charge you a dollar per month to serve you e-mail without reading it or injecting advertising. Can strongly recommend.
All of these things run on free software and are hosted by whoever wants to and knows what they’re doing: Small companies, organizations, people with spare time and a server… so you might have to look around a bit to find who is hosting something that you want to use, but the great thing is that in almost all cases you can just move to a different host (or start hosting yourself if that’s your thing) if you don’t like your current one — greatly reducing the risk of becoming dependent on the sole provider of some service.