^-^

the situation with harry potter is kind of unprecedented in some ways imo because it is maybe the largest media franchise in history to be created & owned by a single person who still has direct creative control over it. who is also a billionaire with significant cultural/political influence. like the usual "no ethical consumption under capitalism" type excuses shatter on impact when the bigoted author in question is logging onto twitter every day saying explicitly that when you buy the tim hortons ravenclaw donut she is using your donut money to fund the genocide of trans people. like with big franchises usually there's at least a little more diffusion of responsibility than this

"But AI can't do your job. It can help you do your job, but that doesn't mean it's going to save anyone money. Take radiology: there's some evidence that AIs can sometimes identify solid-mass tumors that some radiologists miss, and look, I've got cancer. Thankfully, it's very treatable, but I've got an interest in radiology being as reliable and accurate as possible. If my Kaiser hospital bought some AI radiology tools and told its radiologists: "Hey folks, here's the deal. Today, you're processing about 100 x-rays per day. From now on, we're going to get an instantaneous second opinion from the AI, and if the AI thinks you've missed a tumor, we want you to go back and have another look, even if that means you're only processing 98 x-rays per day. That's fine, we just care about finding all those tumors." If that's what they said, I'd be delighted. But no one is investing hundreds of billions in AI companies because they think AI will make radiology more expensive, not even if that also makes radiology more accurate. The market's bet on AI is that an AI salesman will visit the CEO of Kaiser and make this pitch: "Look, you fire 9/10s of your radiologists, saving $20m/year, you give us $10m/year, and you net $10m/year, and the remaining radiologists' job will be to oversee the diagnoses the AI makes at superhuman speed, and somehow remain vigilant as they do so, despite the fact that the AI is usually right, except when it's catastrophically wrong. "And if the AI misses a tumor, this will be the human radiologist's fault, because they are the 'human in the loop.' It's their signature on the diagnosis." This is a reverse centaur, and it's a specific kind of reverse-centaur: it's what Dan Davies calls an "accountability sink." The radiologist's job isn't really to oversee the AI's work, it's to take the blame for the AI's mistakes. This is another key to understanding – and thus deflating – the AI bubble. The AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job. This is key because it helps us build the kinds of coalitions that will be successful in the fight against the AI bubble." - Cory Doctorow, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI

“My basic assumption was, you know, the judge had obviously made his mind up about our guilt before the trial even began, and so it didn’t take me by surprise at all when I actually was sentenced to 50 years in the Bureau of Prisons. I knew, like, this is about making an example, this is about creating a narrative that, you know, anyone who resists the Trump administration’s agenda of mass deportation, is going to be made an example of, is gonna be treated this way, that if you stand up, if you speak out, we will bury you. I knew that that was what this was about the entire time that we were going to trial, and it was why I said from the very beginning, “I’m not gonna plea to anything.” You know, like they offered us plea deals, you know, we could have signed to 15 years for material support for terrorism. And I took the risk that I took of, you know, going to trial because I was like, I’m not going to create evidence of this non-existent terrorist conspiracy. That goes against everything I believe in.” — Autumn Hill

I had a dream last night that the Decemberists guy put out a new song that was him announcing the band was breaking up, but the song was also his like detailing his future career path, and it was an excruciatingly granular 13.5 minutes of him explaining to us in detail that he was going to become a world renowned marionette maker and like the steps he was going to take to complete this (step 1 was learn to spin flax to make his own cord, step 2 was learn whittling to create his own puppets, step 3 to make his own paints, etc etc. He was going for that vertical slice sort of thing) All the while someone was shouting in the background I DON'T WANNA BREAK UP and WHO'S GOING TO GET MY ACCORDION because apparently there was a custody battle happening for that?? But as it turned out the song was too much of a banger and people wouldn't let them quit and also he had like horrible arthritis in his hands that was preventing him from making the shit so they announced within the week that the band was actually back together and The Marionette Maker's Heart's Desire was like their new #1 hit

you used to be able to get a job just by circling a listing in a newspaper in red pen

it is important to remember there's a lot of gay people who are only liberals because they are a gay person

it’s really august huh… like 8 whole months have passed……….. disgusting

can't believe the only options are 30 minutes early or 10 minutes late. if only there were some other way. but what can you do

$1,000,000 deposited into your bank account every day for the rest of your life or sex with Jafar?

does jafar love me

hell no bitch