And Now For Something Completely Irrelevant.

She's not. She's just as bad. Possibly even worse.

And her deranged fans are somehow ok with it. Even keep making excuses for her and moving the goal post instead of accepting that she's a shit person who's done and continues to do real harm.

"Ooooo no one's perfect!" I never said anyone was perfect. This isn't some purity test bullshit; this is a hypocrisy issue. Her fans claim that she's against the atrocities this administration has done and continues to do, but yet she 1) has no problem fraternizing with people who do support it, and 2) can't even be assed to denounce them for using her music in their propaganda. Other artists have, and she's quick to go after fans and Etsy artists for making *fan merch.* Also, have you ever heard the saying, "if you lay with dogs, you're bound to get fleas"? Or "you are the company you keep"?

Edit to add: Oh, she also invited Adam Sandler, a loud and proud Zionist, and he officiated.

"She keeps quiet for safety concerns for her fans" Bullshit. You don't see fans of the more vocal artists being attacked whenever *they* speak out. This is cowardice at best and compliance - even advocacy - at worst. Besides that, she is an absurdly wealthy white woman. She could use her privilege to speak up and speak out, but she doesn't.

"Look at all the money she donates!" 26 million? Of her almost $2 billion net worth??? That's like if I gave my friend a penny to help them out with financial troubles. She's donating money. Great, but it does nothing to reverse the damage that she's done to the environment with her carbon emissions due to excessive jet use. Where are her donations to environmental causes and her efforts to cut back on that? Not to mention her closing off a major city, disrupting businesses, on one of the busiest weekends of the year in the U.S., all for her vanity affair.

"You sound jealous" Hardly. I couldn't imagine having no personality or real values and being so shallow and disingenuous.

"But she's a girl's girl" pretty sure girl's girls don't peddle out the same juvenile, mean girl "not like other girls" songs for almost twenty years. Hell, at least one of her songs in her newest album apparently has her expressing insecurities over younger women, especially black and brown women. And I haven't even gotten to the dogwhistles, or the fact that she apparently derives her material from black creatives without acknowledging them.

Also, she dated at least one minor when she was 22. I don't give a shit if 17 is within the "age of consent" in the US. A 20+ year old woman has no business dating a teenager.

Wambalo and other digital workers spent eight hours a day in front of a screen studying photos and videos, drawing boxes around objects and labeling them, teaching AI algorithms to recognize them. Human labelers tag cars and pedestrians to teach autonomous vehicles not to hit them. Humans circle abnormalities in CTs, MRIs and X-rays to teach AI to recognize diseases. Even as AI gets smarter, humans in the loop will always be needed because there will always be new devices and inventions that'll need labeling.

 Humans in the loop are found not only in Kenya, but also in India, the Philippines and Venezuela. They're often countries with low wages but large populations — well educated, but unemployed.

The pay for humans in the loop is $1.50-2 an hour.  "And that is gross, before tax," Wambalo said.  Wambalo, Nathan Nkunzimana and Fasica Berhane Gebrekidan were employed by SAMA, an American outsourcing company that hired for Meta and OpenAI. SAMA, based in the California Bay Area, employed over 3,000 workers in Kenya. Documents reviewed by 60 Minutes show OpenAI agreed to pay SAMA $12.50 an hour per worker, much more than the $2 the workers actually got, though SAMA says what it paid is a fair wage for the region.

It's destroying the environment. It's taking advantage of people who're desperate. It's traumatizing them for dollars an hour--if they're lucky and they aren't denied their pay for no reason. I think about this a lot, that these people were made to look at awful and disgusting and illegal things for the sake of training these stupid AI.

"I looked at people being slaughtered," Wambalo said. "People engaging in sexual activity with animals. People abusing children physically, sexually. People committing suicide." Berhane Gebrekidan thought she'd been hired for a translation job, but she said what she ended up doing was reviewing content featuring dismembered bodies and drone attack victims. 

[...]

SAMA says mental health counseling was provided by "fully-licensed professionals." Workers say it was woefully inadequate.

It's just absurd and disgusting and infuriating. Yes the good applications are worth humans working on. It's not a bad thing--if the people employed to do the work are compensated appropriately and cared for. But so many of the uses are just unnecessary.

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

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