![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptLet us begin with a promise from the company distributing the movie The Toxic Avenger to erase at least $5 million in medical debt, with each additional million past 5 made at the box office resulting in another million dollars' worth of medical debt destroyed. (The debt itself will not cost $1 million to acquire, as much of the outstanding debt is bought from various debt collection companies for significantly lower than face value.)
If you're looking for something that takes most of the strangeness of a comic book universe and lets it be strange and odd, while also being very entertaining, The television adaptation of The Middleman is available to stream and download from the Internet Archive. There aren't enough episodes of it, and it would do well with a revival, but you can enjoy it for the moment.
If you are on a Typepad-hosted or Typepad-managed blog or service, export all necessary data and assets before September 30, 2025, otherwise all of your material will be inaccessible permanently. Typepad is shutting down, and this is their attempt to allow people to export everything before they turn it all off.
Based on the plethora of conservatives railing against drag culture and calling them (and others who support drag culture and performers) sex predators against children who turn out to be actual sex predators against children, and the lack of drag performers who turn out to be sex predators against children, it's well past time for those accusers to apologize for maligning drag and to seriously work toward cleaning the planks out of their eyes before accusing others of having nonexistent specks in theirs. Which they won't. Instead, they'll redouble their effort to hide, excuse, and rehabilitate those men so that they can reclaim or never have to lose their power, wealth, fame, and followers and keep them in positions where they can continue to abuse others.
Someone is attempting to create a new nation in space between the official borders of Serbia and Croatia, to mostly no success, as Croatia claims the land they want to establish the new nation on and has been fairly aggressive in running the people off the territory, which they claim is unclaimed from either of the nations according to their drawn boundaries.
The United States government arrested and attempted to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda, because they are determined to try and sell to the rest of us that he is somehow a threat and deserved deportation. A judge has temporarily blocked the deportation, barring actually hearing the evidence supposedly mounted against Mr. Abrego Garcia that makes the government so very hot to try and deport him again. Since they were wrong and arbitrary the first time, there's an excellent chance that they're wrong and arbitrary this time, and that the case itself should be dismissed because it's almost certainly animus at not having successfully gotten rid of him the first time. (They also apparently offered him the possibility of being deported to Costa Rica instead of Uganda if he would plead guilty to the charges brought against him, which also tells me that this is animus rather than anything serious.) Because of the way that government officials speak about, slander, defame, and otherwise try to paint Mr. Abrego Garcia as a dangerous human trafficker and gang member outside of their filings and arguments in the court (attempting to prejudice any possible jury or magistrate into determining his guilt before seeing the evidence), Mr. Abrego Garcia has sought a gag order against the government officials that routinely slander and defame him.
The current administrator chose to deny all visas from the occupied Palestinian territories, including humanitarian ones, because a right-wing provocateur posted a video about children being allowed into the United States and demanded that this no longer be allowed to happen. Because they believe that such children should instead die from weapons supplied to their occupiers. Because they believe those children are tainted with the mark of Cain and should die so as to make their occupation more total.
Believing themselves geniuses, members of the administration decided that painting the border fence between the United States and Mexico black will make the metal that makes up the fence too hot to touch during the day, and thus deter persons from attempting to enter the United States without proper authorization. Which is a fine conclusion to make, but also, given the temperatures of those areas, if I were attempting to cross such a structure, I'd do it at night, when it would be less easy to see me and when the metal has cooled sufficiently to the touch. So, really, not exactly a big W here.
Those who have been calling John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, an atypically disciplined racist are correct. And could probably throw on several other -isms that he is atypically disciplined about, as well, facilitating and concurring with the other Justices determined to unravel most of the judicial and legislative progress of the last century and a half.
The current administration has demanded the federally-funded sex education curricula in 40 states, five territories, and the District of Columbia remove all references to trans people or lose funding. The program itself was aimed at trying to produce safer sex practices and to curtail teen pregnancies, but it probably also serves as comprehensive sex ed for many of those teens that might not otherwise get them. In the same vein, the administration has directed that federal medical insurance plans for federal employees no longer be able to cover any gender-affirming care, and instead only cover conversion therapy or other items aimed at convincing a trans person that they are mentally unwell and really are cis, despite the evidence that shows that attempting to convince trans people that they are cis generally results in worse health outcomes and increased risk of self-harm and suicide.
A federal judge in Maryland declared that the Education Department cannot simply declare that all collegiate processes that take race into account unlawful, and must actually use the processes and procedures established by the law to do that work. Which says nothing about the wisdom or foolishness of the actual positions themselves, just that the procedures have to be followed. (Which makes sense as a matter of jurisprudence. You don't have to rule on the substance if you can just rule on the process, and then get back to the substance once the processes are being properly followed.) I thoroughly expect such an order to be ignored and the administration to proceed as if nothing happened, since this administration regularly expresses contempt for the rulings of the court if the court is not in agreement with them.
A whistleblower complaint against the government alleges that the unelected pets of Elon Musk and the current administrator uploaded a live copy of the Social Security database to a cloud server not authorized nor secured sufficiently to hold such data, rendering it vulnerable to theft and all the persons in the database potentially vulnerable to identity theft.
Under the direction of a man who has no business directing any kind of health policy, the Food and Drug Administration rescinded emergency use authorization for COVID-19 vaccines, while approving updated booster shots for a specific subset of persons believed additionally vulnerable. The Health and Human Services secretary announced these moves on social media, rather than through any official channel, and the text of the announcement sounds much more like someone who believes in politics instead of science, despite claims to the contrary. The actual list of conditions is remarkably more expansive than one might think, so there's a high chance that boosters can be received on schedule. (Including at least one or two that most people who consider themselves healthy might qualify for anyway, because they still want to use junk and junked measures of things.) Because of the unscientific background of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the American Academy of Pediatricians released their own guidance on who should receive updated vaccinations, stating that children should also receive them in addition to the restricted categories of adults that the administration recommendations have.
That same attitude prevails in a decision to reduce the number of food-borne pathogens screened by a federal-state partnership, affecting 10 states, because the federal government is not providing sufficient funding to screen and look for all of the pathogens they had been looking for in the past.
And the people supposedly in charge of these programs and decisions are spending their time demanding the evidence of their conspiracy theory and their vaccine skepticism be taken down, so they can prevaricate about what their actual positions were without having to worry that someone will produce recorded evidence to the contrary. And YouTube, where the videos were hosted, complied with the demand by deleting the entire channel they were part of in their eagerness to lick boots. (They claimed it was copyright violations, but these are the statements of public officials, or persons who are now public officials, and therefore there are very good reasons to preserve them.)
In continued attempts to bring as much power and control to himself, and also because he doesn't like seeing Black women in power, the current administrator attempted to dismiss a Federal Reserve Board governor, despite not having the authority to do so, as the Federal Reserve is significantly more independent of the government. The administrator claims that Ms. Cook committed mortgage fraud, which is certainly a statement coming from someone who has regularly been shown to change the valuations of his properties based on what will get him what he wants.
In the Department of Petty Revenge, the current Director of National Intelligence revoked security clearances of current and former officials because they were involved in things that the current administrator insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, were hoaxes, plants, and false flag operations against him that proved election interference attempts from Russia in the 2016 presidential election, or because they served under President Biden.
Accountability is at least being attempted for some officials, as the official currently in charge of the Voice of America broadcast system has been repeatedly ordered to submit testimony and information to a judge overseeing a lawsuit brought against the official regarding her intention to dismantle and starve the broadcaster. The official, of course, stated that the court is overstepping its authority and therefore she will not comply with any orders it issues to her.
A Kentucky community has rallied around their public library and provided sufficient donations to re-purchase queer books that were checked out without the intention of being returned at the urging of a local church pastor. The pastor is full of the usual talking points about protecting the children from queer content, actively rejects that his own supposed Scripture applies to him and his behavior, and that he believes that his obedience to Republican Jesus affords him the authority to decide for others what materials they may read, and he believes that because such removals are civil fine matters, that he won't be punished in any meaningful way for his "civil disobedience." I'm much happier that the community has decided they're not having this nonsense and are providing support so that the materials can be brought back again.
The inhumane and environmentally destructive immigration prison that the State of Florida mockingly named after a prison off the coast of California may be empty shortly, and one can hope that the state and the federal governments trying keep it open are told they cannot do so and must deconstruct it as well. (And that they are found liable and responsible for any inhumane treatment happening at the facility.)
The Republican Party of the State of Texas required a Democratic legislator to stay in the legislative chamber so that they could push through redistricting that violates the Voting Rights Act, since the legislator refused to allow a member of the Texas Department of Public Safety to keep her hostage and prevent her from leaving the state to deny a quorum for this unlawful redistricting. Once there had been one who chose not to go along with it, other Democratic legislators in Texas joined her in the chambers and publicly refused their minders, but for people who see the pattern, they will see that once again a woman of color led, and others followed.
The Teamsters union, and several places like long-haul trucking and the rodeo, have become bastions of right-wing talking points, because the right wing has done their best to saturate the airwaves and fill the gaps with their own talking heads. The piece reinforces the idea that liberals concentrate on urban and metropolitan areas (and hobbies) for their power base and their messaging attempts and conservatives focus on everywhere else, and the conservatives keep winning because their media operation is better and more prevalent everywhere. I'm not entirely sure that's true, but I also don't know that I've ever seen any liberal actually try, or even the possibility that there exists a large liberal media company that could put down nationwide liberal programming intended to work on the same bands and principles as Talk Radio and the like, and be willing to stick it out long enough to start seeing results and networks grow, and so forth. Because a lot of the owners of these media conglomerations are fundamentally pro-Republican, regardless of whether it's about economics or about raw populism, even if some of them are willing to let a few centrists talk on MSNBC.
A person shot children in a church. The Republican Party offers lip-service condolences to the victims, and also wants to make you believe that the shooter's gender identity had anything at all to do with the mass shooting. The Democratic Party wants to get rid of the guns that facilitated the shooting. And probably want to help people not go into the kinds of places that glorify and foment mass violence against others and justify it under any one of a hundred convenient excuses. The students want the guns gone, to have a school where they don't have to drill on how to avoid being shot by a mass killer, and especially not one where they then have to actually but those drills to use in live situations. The students do not want thoughts and prayers and lip service of what a tragedy it is. They want real action to make sure this doesn't happen again.
A teenager has filed a claim of harassment against a Buffalo Wild Wings server who called her a man and said she had to leave the women's restroom. The teenager was only able to get the server to leave by unzipping her hoodie so that the server could see the outline of her breasts against the shirt she was wearing. So, the teen was wearing clothing that didn't immediately showcase tertiary sexual characteristics. That shouldn't have mattered. The teenager was also Black, and there's a lot of people who subconsciously believe that Black women are men (or mannish) and that Black girls are boys (or boyish). The server should have basically minded their own business unless there was actual disruption, instead of acting on unfounded assumptions about the gender of the person going into the bathrooms. Or even better, perhaps gendered bathrooms in public eateries should not be permitted, and instead everyone gets a non-gendered place to pee in private.
In technology, YouTube appears to be running uploaded videos through machines to make them sharper, shinier, and more Hollywood-like without the consent or consultation of those uploading the videos, resulting in a finished product that is not the reality that was uploaded. This is in conjunction with all of the tools like Adobe Photoshop and even camera apps packaged on smartphones that are also trying to shine up and otherwise make our reality more like the movies.
Google intends to make their Android mobile phone operating system like Apple's iOS and prevent the loading of applications from anyone who has not identified themselves and received a digital blessing from Google to let their apps be installed on Android phones. This is touted as a security upgrade, but it is also in the context of Google losing an appeal and being required to allow other app stores to carry apps also available in the Play Store and to allow for other app stores to be installed on Android phones. If all persons have to satisfy Google's requirements before they can distribute an app to an Android phone by any method, then Google retains most to all of the power in the Android ecosystem.
After a string of battery issues on older models of the Pixel line of phones, Google is choosing to deploy software that will gradually reduce the capacity and lengthen the charging time of their Pixel 10 (and 9a) lines, starting the software degradation of the battery after 1,000 charge cycles complete. For people who charge their phones once a day, that would be into three years of use. For those who play battery-intensive games or similar, that could cut to about 1.5 years of use before the battery has been degraded to 80% capacity in software, regardless of what the battery's actual capacity is.
The company often used by law enforcement to search databases of license plate images intends to partner up with a company that makes consume dashboard cameras, feeding all the images that Nexar cameras take directly into its database and turning all Nexar cameras into law enforcement surveillance devices.
A company that chose to scrape works without compensation to the authors of those works so as to train a large language model is settling, and then hoping that not everyone who is potentially part of the class chooses not to take their share of the settlement. The settlement comes because it looked like the Anthropic team was going to lose their court cases, and therefore be hit with much bigger penalties than the settlement they're offering. And then other companies will be allowed to continue scraping until they get sued as well.
The creator of the Tea app attempted to sell women on said app by trying to use women running groups already performing the functions of the app as the face of the app and to do most of the lifting of convincing other women to use the insecure and data-leaking app. So the app was not secure, and the founder was sleazy in trying to make it seem like this was women recommending something to women. And then they spammed the communities and set up communities with similar names to try and crowd out the real things and direct all traffic to the app. Also, hindsight is always clearer than foresight, but this is the kind of thing that, had it been seen in advance, would certainly have set off some red flags for people who were interested in a safe space to spill the tea.
A hack of Google's Salesforce databases coincided with an uptick in phishing attacks on Gmail users. According to Google, the data leak and the phishing increase are unrelated, but increased vigilance is suggested.
Machine tools have gotten sufficiently good that they can toss together samples to create a somewhat convincing-sounding set of instruments and voices, and then use that power to create filthy-lyriced country songs (at the moment.) I suppose this is the inevitable outgrowth of Vocaloids on one side (and deepfake technology on top of that to make the vocals sound like any kind of singer you like) and better and better patches, soundbanks, and more human-like ways to blend, transition, and change the pitches and sounds so that it all sounds very organic on the other. At this point, it's being used to make people bop along to what seems like a wholesome song before the first line of lyrics drop, but it's entirely possible and likely that we'll start seeing artificial artists getting blended in with the human ones and we're not supposed to be able to tell the difference between the two. (Admittedly, the concept of animated band members, or two robots spinning tunes, and the like, is not old. But ultimately, we knew that there were humans underneath it all. Now, there may not be, except at the very beginnings of programming or recording the patches that get used.)
Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp parent company Meta made it possible to create chatbots based on celebrities. Some of them also used image-creation tools to create manipulated imagery of those celebrities, including images depicting them nude, topless, or in lingerie. Including celebrities who are not of age to create and share such images. Meta said that the image creation should not have happened and their safeguards should have prevented it, and that the chatbots, which often engaged in flirts and sexual advances, should have been properly labeled as parodies or otherwise indicated their unreality. I feel like this is one of those situations where, knowing what we know now, and the long history of things like "nude mods," Meta should have recognized that people would use the chatbots for the kinds of purposes depicted in the article. (Then again, several of the more popular bots were apparently created by Meta staffers and let out to the public to use.)
A partnership between Microsoft and Samsung will soon mean that Copilot, Microsoft's largely-unwanted "assistant" that might be properly nicknamed "Clippy 2.0", will be permanently available in Samsung televisions and monitors.
A Chinese car developed by BYD claims to have achieved a true autonomous parking state, one that can be used not just for situations like parallel parking, but to supposedly be able to navigate any parking lot, find an open space, and nestle the car in it. The company is confident in their system of cameras and sensors that they have offered to pay repair costs if one of their cars in autonomous mode actually hits something else and damages it. For as much as certain people claim to be innovators and the very best at things like automotive building, they're being eclipsed by companies and countries that are just simply doing the thing, instead. Perhaps several United States technology companies should spend less time on bragging and more time on letting their products do the talking.
A US-Chinese partnership claims they can turn most plastics back into hydrocarbons in the gasoline range and hydrochloric acid at at least a 95% efficiency rate, and that the acid itself can be neutralized easily enough. This would be a very nice thing if it continues to work and can be scaled up to waste processing levels, because of plastics and their ability to hang around for a significant amount of time after they have been disposed of. Admittedly, turning them into gasoline hydrocarbons might be a mixed blessing, given what burning gasoline hydrocarbons does for other issues, but I feel like this is something that can be managed with other processes once the stock of available plastics is handled. Like, if this is something that can be done at, say, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or other such places, then I am all for getting the plastics out of their current form and into a different one that can be handled.
Amazon is being sued by a group of consumers who allege that they prominently say that people get to "buy" movies, when the fine print in small sizes says "actually, it's just a license, and we can revoke or alter the license at any time, so you don't actually own anything." I sincerely hope the plaintiffs prevail, and that they can set a precedent such that the way that software and digital products have been advertised as "purchases" since they were in shrinkwrap in CompUSA and earlier are either properly classified as such or that when someone purchases, they actually get the rights of ownership of a product. Because this nonsense has been in place since software was delivered in boxes at CompUSA and earlier, and I want a court to crush it.
Last out, a spiky dinosaur that new fossils suggest may have grown spikes from the neck at least a meter long, in addition to all the other spiny points.
A web application designed to tell you what kinds of animals you are picking up and putting down with authority, based on what weights you tell it you can lift and put down with authority. What Animal Do You Even Lift, Bro?
And a story of stones, and reforging the rings around them as the people who those stones were given to reforge themselves closer and closer to the people who they are. Nate and Lee have a wonderful relationship, and this shows in in so many ways.
(Materials viaadrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, the_future_modernes, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
meta_warehouse community, little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
If you're looking for something that takes most of the strangeness of a comic book universe and lets it be strange and odd, while also being very entertaining, The television adaptation of The Middleman is available to stream and download from the Internet Archive. There aren't enough episodes of it, and it would do well with a revival, but you can enjoy it for the moment.
If you are on a Typepad-hosted or Typepad-managed blog or service, export all necessary data and assets before September 30, 2025, otherwise all of your material will be inaccessible permanently. Typepad is shutting down, and this is their attempt to allow people to export everything before they turn it all off.
Based on the plethora of conservatives railing against drag culture and calling them (and others who support drag culture and performers) sex predators against children who turn out to be actual sex predators against children, and the lack of drag performers who turn out to be sex predators against children, it's well past time for those accusers to apologize for maligning drag and to seriously work toward cleaning the planks out of their eyes before accusing others of having nonexistent specks in theirs. Which they won't. Instead, they'll redouble their effort to hide, excuse, and rehabilitate those men so that they can reclaim or never have to lose their power, wealth, fame, and followers and keep them in positions where they can continue to abuse others.
Someone is attempting to create a new nation in space between the official borders of Serbia and Croatia, to mostly no success, as Croatia claims the land they want to establish the new nation on and has been fairly aggressive in running the people off the territory, which they claim is unclaimed from either of the nations according to their drawn boundaries.
The United States government arrested and attempted to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda, because they are determined to try and sell to the rest of us that he is somehow a threat and deserved deportation. A judge has temporarily blocked the deportation, barring actually hearing the evidence supposedly mounted against Mr. Abrego Garcia that makes the government so very hot to try and deport him again. Since they were wrong and arbitrary the first time, there's an excellent chance that they're wrong and arbitrary this time, and that the case itself should be dismissed because it's almost certainly animus at not having successfully gotten rid of him the first time. (They also apparently offered him the possibility of being deported to Costa Rica instead of Uganda if he would plead guilty to the charges brought against him, which also tells me that this is animus rather than anything serious.) Because of the way that government officials speak about, slander, defame, and otherwise try to paint Mr. Abrego Garcia as a dangerous human trafficker and gang member outside of their filings and arguments in the court (attempting to prejudice any possible jury or magistrate into determining his guilt before seeing the evidence), Mr. Abrego Garcia has sought a gag order against the government officials that routinely slander and defame him.
The current administrator chose to deny all visas from the occupied Palestinian territories, including humanitarian ones, because a right-wing provocateur posted a video about children being allowed into the United States and demanded that this no longer be allowed to happen. Because they believe that such children should instead die from weapons supplied to their occupiers. Because they believe those children are tainted with the mark of Cain and should die so as to make their occupation more total.
Believing themselves geniuses, members of the administration decided that painting the border fence between the United States and Mexico black will make the metal that makes up the fence too hot to touch during the day, and thus deter persons from attempting to enter the United States without proper authorization. Which is a fine conclusion to make, but also, given the temperatures of those areas, if I were attempting to cross such a structure, I'd do it at night, when it would be less easy to see me and when the metal has cooled sufficiently to the touch. So, really, not exactly a big W here.
Those who have been calling John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, an atypically disciplined racist are correct. And could probably throw on several other -isms that he is atypically disciplined about, as well, facilitating and concurring with the other Justices determined to unravel most of the judicial and legislative progress of the last century and a half.
The current administration has demanded the federally-funded sex education curricula in 40 states, five territories, and the District of Columbia remove all references to trans people or lose funding. The program itself was aimed at trying to produce safer sex practices and to curtail teen pregnancies, but it probably also serves as comprehensive sex ed for many of those teens that might not otherwise get them. In the same vein, the administration has directed that federal medical insurance plans for federal employees no longer be able to cover any gender-affirming care, and instead only cover conversion therapy or other items aimed at convincing a trans person that they are mentally unwell and really are cis, despite the evidence that shows that attempting to convince trans people that they are cis generally results in worse health outcomes and increased risk of self-harm and suicide.
A federal judge in Maryland declared that the Education Department cannot simply declare that all collegiate processes that take race into account unlawful, and must actually use the processes and procedures established by the law to do that work. Which says nothing about the wisdom or foolishness of the actual positions themselves, just that the procedures have to be followed. (Which makes sense as a matter of jurisprudence. You don't have to rule on the substance if you can just rule on the process, and then get back to the substance once the processes are being properly followed.) I thoroughly expect such an order to be ignored and the administration to proceed as if nothing happened, since this administration regularly expresses contempt for the rulings of the court if the court is not in agreement with them.
A whistleblower complaint against the government alleges that the unelected pets of Elon Musk and the current administrator uploaded a live copy of the Social Security database to a cloud server not authorized nor secured sufficiently to hold such data, rendering it vulnerable to theft and all the persons in the database potentially vulnerable to identity theft.
Under the direction of a man who has no business directing any kind of health policy, the Food and Drug Administration rescinded emergency use authorization for COVID-19 vaccines, while approving updated booster shots for a specific subset of persons believed additionally vulnerable. The Health and Human Services secretary announced these moves on social media, rather than through any official channel, and the text of the announcement sounds much more like someone who believes in politics instead of science, despite claims to the contrary. The actual list of conditions is remarkably more expansive than one might think, so there's a high chance that boosters can be received on schedule. (Including at least one or two that most people who consider themselves healthy might qualify for anyway, because they still want to use junk and junked measures of things.) Because of the unscientific background of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the American Academy of Pediatricians released their own guidance on who should receive updated vaccinations, stating that children should also receive them in addition to the restricted categories of adults that the administration recommendations have.
That same attitude prevails in a decision to reduce the number of food-borne pathogens screened by a federal-state partnership, affecting 10 states, because the federal government is not providing sufficient funding to screen and look for all of the pathogens they had been looking for in the past.
And the people supposedly in charge of these programs and decisions are spending their time demanding the evidence of their conspiracy theory and their vaccine skepticism be taken down, so they can prevaricate about what their actual positions were without having to worry that someone will produce recorded evidence to the contrary. And YouTube, where the videos were hosted, complied with the demand by deleting the entire channel they were part of in their eagerness to lick boots. (They claimed it was copyright violations, but these are the statements of public officials, or persons who are now public officials, and therefore there are very good reasons to preserve them.)
In continued attempts to bring as much power and control to himself, and also because he doesn't like seeing Black women in power, the current administrator attempted to dismiss a Federal Reserve Board governor, despite not having the authority to do so, as the Federal Reserve is significantly more independent of the government. The administrator claims that Ms. Cook committed mortgage fraud, which is certainly a statement coming from someone who has regularly been shown to change the valuations of his properties based on what will get him what he wants.
In the Department of Petty Revenge, the current Director of National Intelligence revoked security clearances of current and former officials because they were involved in things that the current administrator insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, were hoaxes, plants, and false flag operations against him that proved election interference attempts from Russia in the 2016 presidential election, or because they served under President Biden.
Accountability is at least being attempted for some officials, as the official currently in charge of the Voice of America broadcast system has been repeatedly ordered to submit testimony and information to a judge overseeing a lawsuit brought against the official regarding her intention to dismantle and starve the broadcaster. The official, of course, stated that the court is overstepping its authority and therefore she will not comply with any orders it issues to her.
A Kentucky community has rallied around their public library and provided sufficient donations to re-purchase queer books that were checked out without the intention of being returned at the urging of a local church pastor. The pastor is full of the usual talking points about protecting the children from queer content, actively rejects that his own supposed Scripture applies to him and his behavior, and that he believes that his obedience to Republican Jesus affords him the authority to decide for others what materials they may read, and he believes that because such removals are civil fine matters, that he won't be punished in any meaningful way for his "civil disobedience." I'm much happier that the community has decided they're not having this nonsense and are providing support so that the materials can be brought back again.
The inhumane and environmentally destructive immigration prison that the State of Florida mockingly named after a prison off the coast of California may be empty shortly, and one can hope that the state and the federal governments trying keep it open are told they cannot do so and must deconstruct it as well. (And that they are found liable and responsible for any inhumane treatment happening at the facility.)
The Republican Party of the State of Texas required a Democratic legislator to stay in the legislative chamber so that they could push through redistricting that violates the Voting Rights Act, since the legislator refused to allow a member of the Texas Department of Public Safety to keep her hostage and prevent her from leaving the state to deny a quorum for this unlawful redistricting. Once there had been one who chose not to go along with it, other Democratic legislators in Texas joined her in the chambers and publicly refused their minders, but for people who see the pattern, they will see that once again a woman of color led, and others followed.
The Teamsters union, and several places like long-haul trucking and the rodeo, have become bastions of right-wing talking points, because the right wing has done their best to saturate the airwaves and fill the gaps with their own talking heads. The piece reinforces the idea that liberals concentrate on urban and metropolitan areas (and hobbies) for their power base and their messaging attempts and conservatives focus on everywhere else, and the conservatives keep winning because their media operation is better and more prevalent everywhere. I'm not entirely sure that's true, but I also don't know that I've ever seen any liberal actually try, or even the possibility that there exists a large liberal media company that could put down nationwide liberal programming intended to work on the same bands and principles as Talk Radio and the like, and be willing to stick it out long enough to start seeing results and networks grow, and so forth. Because a lot of the owners of these media conglomerations are fundamentally pro-Republican, regardless of whether it's about economics or about raw populism, even if some of them are willing to let a few centrists talk on MSNBC.
A person shot children in a church. The Republican Party offers lip-service condolences to the victims, and also wants to make you believe that the shooter's gender identity had anything at all to do with the mass shooting. The Democratic Party wants to get rid of the guns that facilitated the shooting. And probably want to help people not go into the kinds of places that glorify and foment mass violence against others and justify it under any one of a hundred convenient excuses. The students want the guns gone, to have a school where they don't have to drill on how to avoid being shot by a mass killer, and especially not one where they then have to actually but those drills to use in live situations. The students do not want thoughts and prayers and lip service of what a tragedy it is. They want real action to make sure this doesn't happen again.
A teenager has filed a claim of harassment against a Buffalo Wild Wings server who called her a man and said she had to leave the women's restroom. The teenager was only able to get the server to leave by unzipping her hoodie so that the server could see the outline of her breasts against the shirt she was wearing. So, the teen was wearing clothing that didn't immediately showcase tertiary sexual characteristics. That shouldn't have mattered. The teenager was also Black, and there's a lot of people who subconsciously believe that Black women are men (or mannish) and that Black girls are boys (or boyish). The server should have basically minded their own business unless there was actual disruption, instead of acting on unfounded assumptions about the gender of the person going into the bathrooms. Or even better, perhaps gendered bathrooms in public eateries should not be permitted, and instead everyone gets a non-gendered place to pee in private.
In technology, YouTube appears to be running uploaded videos through machines to make them sharper, shinier, and more Hollywood-like without the consent or consultation of those uploading the videos, resulting in a finished product that is not the reality that was uploaded. This is in conjunction with all of the tools like Adobe Photoshop and even camera apps packaged on smartphones that are also trying to shine up and otherwise make our reality more like the movies.
Google intends to make their Android mobile phone operating system like Apple's iOS and prevent the loading of applications from anyone who has not identified themselves and received a digital blessing from Google to let their apps be installed on Android phones. This is touted as a security upgrade, but it is also in the context of Google losing an appeal and being required to allow other app stores to carry apps also available in the Play Store and to allow for other app stores to be installed on Android phones. If all persons have to satisfy Google's requirements before they can distribute an app to an Android phone by any method, then Google retains most to all of the power in the Android ecosystem.
After a string of battery issues on older models of the Pixel line of phones, Google is choosing to deploy software that will gradually reduce the capacity and lengthen the charging time of their Pixel 10 (and 9a) lines, starting the software degradation of the battery after 1,000 charge cycles complete. For people who charge their phones once a day, that would be into three years of use. For those who play battery-intensive games or similar, that could cut to about 1.5 years of use before the battery has been degraded to 80% capacity in software, regardless of what the battery's actual capacity is.
The company often used by law enforcement to search databases of license plate images intends to partner up with a company that makes consume dashboard cameras, feeding all the images that Nexar cameras take directly into its database and turning all Nexar cameras into law enforcement surveillance devices.
A company that chose to scrape works without compensation to the authors of those works so as to train a large language model is settling, and then hoping that not everyone who is potentially part of the class chooses not to take their share of the settlement. The settlement comes because it looked like the Anthropic team was going to lose their court cases, and therefore be hit with much bigger penalties than the settlement they're offering. And then other companies will be allowed to continue scraping until they get sued as well.
The creator of the Tea app attempted to sell women on said app by trying to use women running groups already performing the functions of the app as the face of the app and to do most of the lifting of convincing other women to use the insecure and data-leaking app. So the app was not secure, and the founder was sleazy in trying to make it seem like this was women recommending something to women. And then they spammed the communities and set up communities with similar names to try and crowd out the real things and direct all traffic to the app. Also, hindsight is always clearer than foresight, but this is the kind of thing that, had it been seen in advance, would certainly have set off some red flags for people who were interested in a safe space to spill the tea.
A hack of Google's Salesforce databases coincided with an uptick in phishing attacks on Gmail users. According to Google, the data leak and the phishing increase are unrelated, but increased vigilance is suggested.
Machine tools have gotten sufficiently good that they can toss together samples to create a somewhat convincing-sounding set of instruments and voices, and then use that power to create filthy-lyriced country songs (at the moment.) I suppose this is the inevitable outgrowth of Vocaloids on one side (and deepfake technology on top of that to make the vocals sound like any kind of singer you like) and better and better patches, soundbanks, and more human-like ways to blend, transition, and change the pitches and sounds so that it all sounds very organic on the other. At this point, it's being used to make people bop along to what seems like a wholesome song before the first line of lyrics drop, but it's entirely possible and likely that we'll start seeing artificial artists getting blended in with the human ones and we're not supposed to be able to tell the difference between the two. (Admittedly, the concept of animated band members, or two robots spinning tunes, and the like, is not old. But ultimately, we knew that there were humans underneath it all. Now, there may not be, except at the very beginnings of programming or recording the patches that get used.)
Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp parent company Meta made it possible to create chatbots based on celebrities. Some of them also used image-creation tools to create manipulated imagery of those celebrities, including images depicting them nude, topless, or in lingerie. Including celebrities who are not of age to create and share such images. Meta said that the image creation should not have happened and their safeguards should have prevented it, and that the chatbots, which often engaged in flirts and sexual advances, should have been properly labeled as parodies or otherwise indicated their unreality. I feel like this is one of those situations where, knowing what we know now, and the long history of things like "nude mods," Meta should have recognized that people would use the chatbots for the kinds of purposes depicted in the article. (Then again, several of the more popular bots were apparently created by Meta staffers and let out to the public to use.)
A partnership between Microsoft and Samsung will soon mean that Copilot, Microsoft's largely-unwanted "assistant" that might be properly nicknamed "Clippy 2.0", will be permanently available in Samsung televisions and monitors.
A Chinese car developed by BYD claims to have achieved a true autonomous parking state, one that can be used not just for situations like parallel parking, but to supposedly be able to navigate any parking lot, find an open space, and nestle the car in it. The company is confident in their system of cameras and sensors that they have offered to pay repair costs if one of their cars in autonomous mode actually hits something else and damages it. For as much as certain people claim to be innovators and the very best at things like automotive building, they're being eclipsed by companies and countries that are just simply doing the thing, instead. Perhaps several United States technology companies should spend less time on bragging and more time on letting their products do the talking.
A US-Chinese partnership claims they can turn most plastics back into hydrocarbons in the gasoline range and hydrochloric acid at at least a 95% efficiency rate, and that the acid itself can be neutralized easily enough. This would be a very nice thing if it continues to work and can be scaled up to waste processing levels, because of plastics and their ability to hang around for a significant amount of time after they have been disposed of. Admittedly, turning them into gasoline hydrocarbons might be a mixed blessing, given what burning gasoline hydrocarbons does for other issues, but I feel like this is something that can be managed with other processes once the stock of available plastics is handled. Like, if this is something that can be done at, say, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or other such places, then I am all for getting the plastics out of their current form and into a different one that can be handled.
Amazon is being sued by a group of consumers who allege that they prominently say that people get to "buy" movies, when the fine print in small sizes says "actually, it's just a license, and we can revoke or alter the license at any time, so you don't actually own anything." I sincerely hope the plaintiffs prevail, and that they can set a precedent such that the way that software and digital products have been advertised as "purchases" since they were in shrinkwrap in CompUSA and earlier are either properly classified as such or that when someone purchases, they actually get the rights of ownership of a product. Because this nonsense has been in place since software was delivered in boxes at CompUSA and earlier, and I want a court to crush it.
Last out, a spiky dinosaur that new fossils suggest may have grown spikes from the neck at least a meter long, in addition to all the other spiny points.
A web application designed to tell you what kinds of animals you are picking up and putting down with authority, based on what weights you tell it you can lift and put down with authority. What Animal Do You Even Lift, Bro?
And a story of stones, and reforging the rings around them as the people who those stones were given to reforge themselves closer and closer to the people who they are. Nate and Lee have a wonderful relationship, and this shows in in so many ways.
(Materials via
adrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, the_future_modernes, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the meta_warehouse community, little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
no subject
Date: 2025-09-01 04:24 pm (UTC)There's studies about Bedouins and other desert dwellers wearing black and white robed outfits. There are advantages to black: yes, it attracts heat, but it apparently also discharges it faster than white. Black vs silver-bodied SLR cameras back in the '70s/'80s was a very controversial thing, I remember an article where a camera magazine put thermocouples into a pair of bodies to measure the actual difference in sunlight and there really wasn't any.