Excess savings peaked at $2.1 trillion in August 2021, far exceeding the projected trend line from before the pandemic.
Explain it how you want, but when you have a figure that's gone from $2.1 trillion to $190 billion among the same 330 million people, something interesting has happened. The standard explanation isn't that the stimulus checks were a significant factor, but rather that you had two years of people not traveling, not attending events, not really going out to eat, and generally having significantly fewer opportunities to spend. Now that that's ended, we've seen a year of people trying to make up for that lost time, going on trips, and generally splurging a bit.
Anecdotally, I saved a ton on money in 2020 on a pretty mediocre salary because literally my only expenses were rent and groceries.
The whole point of the constitution is “to ensure domestic tranquility”, and “no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process…” but I guess we get to handwave that if the means of deprivation being legislated is a second order effect.
There isn’t. It’s just that if you keep destabilizing the climate your practical right to keep your head and shoulders in the same place keeps deminishing
Look I’ve consulted with our medical doctors, and they’re going to check it, and these doctors, they’re the best in the business you know? Huuuuuge. Hugest doctors that have ever doctored, best we’ve ever seen. Ever. And these are good doctors with tremendous skills. They’ve been studying this new thing that - and I’m not sure if you have heard of this as it’s groundbreaking, tremendous stuff, this knowledge that we have. But they’ve been talking to this Theranos doctor. At least I think she’s a doctor, she has this doctor team and I think she has the knowledge of a doctor. So anyway this doctor has a huge voice, deepest I’ve ever heard, the kind of voice that gets things done. And so I says to this doctor, supposing you brought this Theranos inside the body. Which you can do, either through the skin or in some other way, and she says she can’t bring Theranos into the body because it’s a huge building or whatever because I wasn’t really listening to the details, but she has some things she’s gonna test. And this Theranos stuff she does with her other doctors, it’s the best stuff to help stop prison you know? And she says, she’s done something similar in order to keep out of prison, something she researched with her team to bring a baby inside the body to stay out of prison. Supposing that could happen for me, or for anyone who doesn’t want prison, you know? Are we gonna look into that, if I can bring a baby inside my body? She says she’s gonna test that too. Sounds interesting. And then I see conspiracy and Truth, my version of truth, the best there ever was, and I heard that it knocks out things like prison in a minute. One minute, it’s crazy! Absolutely crazy. Is there a way we can do something llike that? Supposing we can inject truth inside the body, by injection or almost like a cleaning? To keep me out of prison. And she says we’re gonna look into that, too. And these aren’t rumors you know, this is the real stuff right here. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t? And again I say maybe you can, maybe you can’t because I’m not a doctor. But I’m like a person who has a good… uh, you know what. I think it’s a great thing to look at. And look, I’m the former president and you guys are fake news.
When will we begin to criminalize the far-right GOP members who incite violence and do naught but spew threats of violence and legal repercussions with no teeth?
How you answer is the difference between being fascist and not. (Hint: it’s definitely OK to lock up those who actively do something lawbreaking, but not if someone kept the peace and obeyed the law and kept their rhetoric peaceful enough that no one is threatened)
The paradox of tolerance required that Trump and his guilty cohorts be tried for Jan. 6th. The GA case is an extension of those charges investigating that. How this case goes will probably set a nationwide precedent to whether or not additional GOP oversteps could be tried as criminal on any level.
With luck law will land on the right side; and remind everyone that peaceful discourse is much preferable to aggressive actions.
I don't know about glasses but the various Night Mode applications help my eyes a lot at night. I use a soft white bulb (4200k) and match my screens to the same temp and I have noticed much less eye strain/pain. Whether that helps sleep or not I have no idea, but it's certainly more comfortable on my 4k tv/monitor that wants to blast 800 nits into my face at 11:00pm. I use an application called Iris on both macOS (when connected to the tv) and Linux (always connected to the tv) to adjust the color temp and also the brightness because this tv simply doesn't get dark enough on it's own without messing with color or contrast. You can offset the reddish hue by increasing the green tint, which is a color that doesn't mess with your eyes or ruin your night vision.
I got night mode on all screen devices and it completely fixed my sleep issues. I used to take an hour at least to fall asleep, now it’s like 15min. Also, during holidays I do not push my sleep cycle to 5am anymore.
possibly under the current law. when it comes to, say, lab-grown meat, there are specific, patented processes for doing that which can produce a specific result that could possibly be copyrighted. I think it would be hard to argue in court that it’s a “creative work”, but maybe? it wouldn’t surprise me if some particularly unscrupulous company made an attempt to do so.
I wonder to what degree a human would have to be involved? Like if an AI generated the background and you painted on top of it would that be enough. If so, how much would you need to modify the generated output for it to be considered human authored, just changing the colours, some editing/blurring/cropping. Will be interested to see if this gets clarified.
At that point, what is the point? These creative AI are being pushed to replace workers, not work with them. If you have to pay for the AI, and pay people, why not just save the money and use people?
I guess for the same reason you pay for computers but still staff. It’s a force multiplyer. I think we are still a bit of a ways off from total replacement but the force multiplyer effect is something that can happen right now with current capabilities.
Perhaps, but if workers know that so much of the work is being done by AI, I would think they would push for higher compensation since the money would otherwise go straight to the top.
Granted that sort of bullshit has been going on since man invented money. But I think this might be the change where people finally realize how greedy people at the top really are.
I hope that’s how it works out. I guess it will depend on how the balance of power is set up between workers and employers in your region and profession. In practice I’m worried that it won’t work out well for most of us.
The rich folks still need everyone earning money though otherwise nobody will buy their stuff so hopefully some kind of solution is reached that can benefit everyone.
To be fair, if we could achieve a fully autonomous robotic workforce (read: roboslaves) that can do everything a human can do, it would go one of two ways:
Everyone benefits from the reduction in labor needs and humanity works toward a post scarcity future
The wealthy hoard the workforce, and keep everyone else under their boot.
Workers will try, and some will win but many will lose. The company switching to AI assisted work is already going to be laying off a sizable portion of their workforce. If anything wages are going to go down due to the productivity gains as hiring will be easier.
Now if workers have a strong and useful union, they might have the leverage to negotiate favorable terms. But without that, the benefits of technological capital does not go to the workers.
As a designer, there is a limited purpose to use generative graphics as assets in a composition for various purposes. I might want to generate a cloud background, or perhaps a small object to use here or there. Certainly not an entire composition, because they always come out bizarre or warped, or having some sort of weird hallucination in them. But generative AI can create, for example, a flower, or a building to be used in background, or to cover up an empty space. Once you place that item, then I would have to go in and touch it up a bit to make it look like it fits and adjust the lighting and fix any weird quirks that might have, but it’s a lot better than having to have a photographer go out and take a photo of it or to pay for a stock photo of it and license that plus every problem that comes with that.
So generative AI tools in Photoshop, for example, can end up saving a lot of time and effort and money for licensing stock photos, especially when I only need a portion of it, but it doesn’t comprise but a small portion of an entire composition. 
You need to exert creative control over the product. If you created an appropriate image for the background, that would probably be enough. If you slapped the same decal on everything produced by an AI, that would probably not be enough.
Remember, AI generated work is in the public domain. So your question is identical to “Can I take a public domain work and alter it sufficiently to claim copyright on the product?”. The answer is yes, provided you make sufficient changes.
Remember, AI generated work is in the public domain.
That hasn’t been determined yet. A human prompt used by the AI to generate content might be enough to grant copyright. This case is about autonomous AI generated content.
A prompt is not sufficient, in fact some image copyrights were revoked from Kristina Kashtanova when it was revealed that her involvement in generating the images was limited to providing AI prompts.
She was only allowed to keep copyrights for work with more active involvement, namely text and layout.
Two members of the **Little Rock Nine — the group of nine African American students who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957 **— pushed back against the Arkansas Education Department’s decision.
“I think the attempts to erase history is working for the Republican Party,” said Elizabeth Eckford, a member of the Little Rock Nine in an interview with NBC News. “They have some boogeymen that are really popular with their supporters.”
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