ABrockwell @aebrockwell@qoto.org

I really think all these tech companies are going to be in rough shape when the other shoe drops.

Yes, right now, it's making a lot of sense to their bottom line. Record-breaking profits can surely be even more record-breaking if you slice headcount. Yes, a correction after pandemic hiring is likely in order.

But fostering an industry culture where everyone is afraid of being laid off all the time is not going to work out well long term.

”Thanks to #Republicans, one in three women of reproductive age now live under an #abortion ban.”

On the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, with Representative Jasmine Crockett: https://www.texasobserver.org/abortion-ban-roe-v-wade-election-2024?utm_campaign=mastodon

#women #RoeVWade #Trump #Texas #election2024 #democracy #healthcare #news #politics #USpol

George Takei asks Robert P. Jones, head of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) how he would characterize the threat that Christian nationalism poses at this moment in our history. Jones says,

"The rise of contemporary white Christian nationalism, as it is constituted through Trump’s MAGA takeover of today’s Republican Party, constitutes the largest threat to democracy I have experienced in my lifetime."

#WhiteChristianNationalism #Republicans #democracy
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https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/big-questions-answers-robert-p-jones

The media industry is in a free fall. By @taylorlorenz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24SLlTu3sw8

If you tell someone to “Google it” at this point you’re telling them to look up five ads and some AI-generated bs instead of the actual thing they want to know.

*old guy takes long hit on the bong*

“Back in my day, search engines used to find things besides the wreckage of late-stage capitalism.”

Antony Gormley's memorial to Alan Turing has been unveiled in #Cambridge.... In the end whether you like or not will depend on whether you think a memorial should be directly representational (i.e. look like Turing) or whether an artist should respond in their own way to the subject.

In fairness no #publicart is going to please everyone, but at least its good to see public art actually being done.... even if its effectively on private land (in the grounds of Kings College).

#sculpture

I just read the sentence “as companies struggle with the threat of AI” and my eyes rolled so hard that I hurt myself.

There is no AI threat. There is no AI. There are people treating ludicrously expensive algorithms as one stop solutions to esoteric problems.

The only threat is the one constructed by managers who think theres a threat. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.

Can someone please turn the tech industry off and on again? Theres a whole load of corrupted memory floating around.

New: Google News is boosting AI-generated garbage articles that rip-off other peoples' work. One company even admitted practice to me. Even wilder: Google says it doesn't focus on whether an article was made by AI or a human for News, opening way for more https://www.404media.co/google-news-is-boosting-garbage-ai-generated-articles/

He could be anywhere, anywhere at all.

"Go to an old cemetery. See all the baby graves from before the 1950s & 60s? After that, hardly any. That's when people started vaccinating their children against deadly childhood diseases. If you're unsure what to do to protect your kids, the answer is literally written in stone." — Michael Okuda

Without vaccines, many transmissible diseases were once an early death sentence. People are so quick to forget how fortunate we are to have access to them.

We Really Don't Have to "Understand" Trump Voters Anymore

https://www.readtpa.com/p/we-really-dont-have-to-understand

Apologies for the presumption, but had to share this: back in 2015, I published a version of my great grandmother's short memoir of her time in Western Australia in the 1920s. Entitled A Cockney in the Outback, I was able to show it to my grandmother (who was born out there) shortly before she died.

The tool I used - Adobe Slate - is no more, but it seems its successor Adobe Express was able to resurrect it perfectly. So, if you've a spare few minutes, please enjoy:

https://express.adobe.com/page/Bxlnd

In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who supply the scammers - not the scammers themselves. The kids selling dope on the corner are making less than minimum wage, while the respectable crime-bosses who own the labs clean up. Desperate "retail investors" who buy shitcoins from Superbowl ads get skinned, while the MBA bros who issue the coins make millions (in real dollars, not crypto).

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«But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable […] [is] their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they're all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.»
@pluralistic on why the #scammers are the #MLM-scammees. A must-read.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Sounds to me like these guardsmen were following illegal orders and need to be arrested and put on trial for murder.

https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/texas-guardsmen-watched-as-a-woman

Yup, its what happens when people finally start meeting non-americans after a life of thinking USA is the only country.

"Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal."

E.O. Wilson.

Yesterday Trump claimed, via his attorney, that a President can legally sell pardons, sell military secrets, and order assassinations of his political rivals.

Why TF is this story not front and center in every news source?