I don’t like that all art is just “content.” I can believe that the cost of creating “content” really is near-zero, but “content” isn’t the kind of music I look for. I spend effort trying to appreciate the craft and understand it, so “content” kind of defeats the point.
I find the very term "content" fascinating, because the exact definition you choose puts it on a kind of spectrum with "useful" at one end and "measurable" at the other.
When Daniel Ek talks about "content," he means any pile of bits he can package up, shove in front of people, and stuff with ads. From that definition, making "content" is super cheap. I can record myself literally screaming for 30 seconds into the microphone already in my laptop and upload it using the internet connection I already have. Is it worth consuming? No, but I'll get to that. And content under that definition is very measurable in many senses, like file size, duration, and (important to him) number of hours people stream it (and can inject ads into). But from this view, all "content" is interchangable and equal, so it's not a very useful definition, because some content is extremely popular and is consumed heavily, while other content is not consumed at all. From Daniel's perspective, this difference is random, enigmatic, and awe inspiring, because he can't measure it.
At the other end of the spectrum is the "useful" definition where the only "content" is good content. My 30 seconds of screaming isn't content, it's garbage. It's good content that actually brings in the ad revenue, because it's what people will put up with ads to get access to. But what I would consider good content is not what someone else would consider good content, which is what makes it much harder to measure. But we can all agree making good content is hard and thus almost always expensive (at least compared to garbage passing as content).
And that's what makes Daniel Ek look like an out of touch billionaire. The people who make good content (that makes him money) use the more useful definition, which is difficult to make and expensive and actually worth talking about, while he uses the measurable definition that's in all the graphs on his desk that summarize his revenue stream.
It’s a contronym at this point. “Content” is the cheapest thing to fill the screen or the sound waves. It would be like referring to the box of peanuts in ashipment as the “contents”.
The stuff in the pages of a book or in a TV show is supposed to be art. Content is engineered to be as cheap as possible and as lowest common denominator appealing as possible.
He’s not even correct by the “shovel bits at people” definition as the content that Spotify has that people care about does cost money to acquire. They paid Joe Rogan actual money (on the presumption that it was bits that would draw in enough people) for his content
Now if he was the CEO of YouTube he might have a point. But he’s so out of touch he doesn’t even realize he’s paying for things he’s paying for.
A tension that I find very interesting is how YouTube creators with a decent but not huge subscriber base (I’ve mainly seen it in video essayists, but that’s just what I watch more of) grapple with the sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit dichotomy of “content” vs “art”, where “content” is what the algorithm wants and what will pay their bills, and “art” is the weird stuff they actually want to make.
This is the dilemma all artists of every variety have to face and have ever since art has been a concept. Ideally one can find a balance between the two. I was broke most of my adult life because I felt I had “too much integrity” to create things that made money. That’s selling out, right? If I was smart I would have sold out to fund the things I really wanted to do but I didn’t have that insight when I was young.
imo, it’s a semantic attack, and it’s been very effective. art, drawings, paintings, animations, movies, shows, music, poetry, books, code, games, any free human creative venture: it is all suddenly (and falsely) insinuated to only be possible when placed inside a “platform”. you and I may know this isn’t true, but most people could not defend against this hostile idea or simply could not identify it as such, and now falsely believe human expression is only “real” when it’s inside a company’s ad-filled self-reinforcing skinner box.
There were no fast moving cars back then. I think Jesus just fucked up. Although, you know he’s been around the entire time cars have been around. So maybe you’re right and he just let go of the wheel. Heck maybe he did it on purpose!
His TV show had the absolute worst argument in favor of raising minimum wage that I have ever seen, which really pissed me off because he could have made a legitimate argument. But no, he challenged he and his girlfriend to live on the equivalent of minimum wage at the time for 30 days. His girlfriend insisted they continue their organic vegan lifestyle, so they blew through their food budget, and then one of them got a not especially serious cold and they went to the ER over it.
If you’re going to live like you’re on minimum wage, show how hard it is just to survive on that. Don’t do that first world middle class problems bullshit.
By blowing through the budget they showed that choosing to eat healthy food is not an option on minimum wage. Surviving is too low a bar to get the point across.
If you’re trying to show that to a general audience, don’t insist you eat a diet that most of them wouldn’t eat whether or not it was affordable. All it makes you look like is someone who grew up in privilege and doesn’t understand poverty or the need to make sacrifices because of it.
First, I’ll agree it wasn’t a completely objective approach to trying to live on minimum wage.
All it makes you look like is someone who grew up in privilege and doesn’t understand poverty or the need to make sacrifices because of it.
I think that was also part of the point. He was reflecting much of his audience showing just how incompatible a privileged lifestyle is with the majority of the working poor. His conclusion wasn’t “this is the way to do this” but instead “Look how bad I screwed this up trying to live even partially like I normally did”.
It was an imperfect episode, but is one of the few videoed storytelling of someone with means trying to experience a lower standard of living than they are used to. To-date its the only one I can think of that showed some of the in-the-trenches difficulty of trying to find housing, a job, transportation to the job, food budgeting, and uninsured healthcare interactions and costs. For a 45 minute runtime with explanation of the premise to conclusion, it had some value.
I just don’t agree. I think people looked at that and said that it proved that it’s easy to live on minimum wage as long as you don’t insist on eating things like organic food.
What it needed to prove is that it isn’t possible to live on minimum wage.
I just don’t agree. I think people looked at that and said that it proved that it’s easy to live on minimum wage as long as you don’t insist on eating things like organic food.
They (he and his wife) were barely scraping by before the organic food thing, which was one single purchase. If anyone came away thinking it was just that one purchase that sent them off the rails then I’m not sure they’d be convinced anyway about the difficulties and dangers of minimum wage income to support oneself.
What it needed to prove is that it isn’t possible to live on minimum wage.
I believe we agree already its not possible to live on minimum wage. I’m not sure its fair to lay the blame of this not being fully acknowledge in society at the feet of a 45 minute reality TV show.
I just don’t agree. I think people looked at that and said that it proved that it’s easy to live on minimum wage as long as you don’t insist on eating things like organic food.
i think this is more of a cope than anything, even if you presented these people with a fair and balanced take they would just start making shit up anyway “oh they probably do drugs” “oh they probably buy designer clothes” “oh they probably have a nicer car” etc. etc. etc.
All it makes you look like is someone who grew up in privilege and doesn’t understand poverty or the need to make sacrifices because of it.
but you could also flip this on its head, start eating dumpster food, and saving as much money as possible, living as frugally as possible, only to demonstrate that actually “minimum wage isn’t that bad” which would further worsen the issue, so, i guess a balance here is needed.
His show had an episode with a mom trying to drink like her college daughter. The mom starts going out most nights, eating like shit and feeling bad during the day. The part that has stayed with me for almost 20 years is how the mom was definitely having a good time towards the middle of the month. When I first saw it I was a little younger than the daughter and now I am a little younger than the mom was at filming. When I question if I should start drinking more again, I think of that lady and say “Maybe.”
i mean even then, i think it’s still fair. It shows problems of the more privileged sure, but if the more privileged people are skill issued this hard, imagine what poor people are dealing with.
I’d say he single handedly killed the supersize option at McDonald’s. Though I don’t think this was the point of his documentary, I still think it’s a massive accomplishment by a single person.
Well it’s debatable just how much influence it had, officially McDonald’s says that the documentary had no effect on their decision.
Buttttt they took it off the menu and started highlighting their healthy options just 6 weeks after it’s release, which is a pretty standard corporate timeline to react to something sooo yea
Admitting a negative documentary impacted your decision making just invites more to be made. Obviously it was the reason. Obviously they’ll never say that.
Would have to say very much so and ended the trend of bigger and bigger food and beverage options. I remember there being a coffee chain that was competing with Starbucks at the time that introduced a full 44oz frappucino-type drink, and convenience stores starting to introduce 52oz sodas. Seemed like the sky was the limit back then but all those super-sized options disappeared within about a year after Super Size Me.
His insinuation that McDonald’s caused liver damage in his documentary was pretty questionable especially when it came out that he’d failed to mention his severe alcoholism.
It is and it has been since 1787, but there’s no functional difference between a law not being enforced and the thing the law’s about being legal.
(Art. I, § 9, cl. 8): “[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
(Art. II, § 1, cl. 7): “The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.”
(Art. I, § 6, cl. 2): “No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.”
Wouldn’t it just be easier to enforce the one that’s already a law. And if what is already a law isn’t being enforced then, what makes this new law more enforceable?
I haven’t forgot, just like i haven’t forgot the administration has threatened sanctions to the international criminal court because they have evidence of US backed genocide.
It absolutely would. Unfortunately, if I remember the details of this circus when it was happening, there are no criminal penalties attached to those amendments, so the only people who can do anything about it are Congress. And what happens if Congress is controlled by your party? Well, exactly what happened when Trump was impeached twice for actions that were at least as significant…
(Art. I, 9, cl. 8): "[NJo Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State’
Unfortunately this doesn’t sufficiently cover things like 'Random Russian Billionaire Oligarch" so long as there is the slightest modicum of a veil of separation from “any King, Prince or State”.
So for example, as long as Putin secretly tells his billionaire buddy to go pay off Trump and to keep it hush hush, this clause is even more toothless than it already is in practice.
I don’t mean to backseat engineer, but ensuring your BRAIN INTERFACE DEVICE succsessfully connects seems pretty fucking vital and worth of a redesign. Even if its expensive. Even if the probability is low, it needs to be virtually zero.
Its hard to take a step back and view this as regular product development that has timelines and such strictly due to the nature of the product. This is almost literally the most invasive a product can be, you better fucking nail your execution.
The people that actually would benefit from this technology deserve better.
It depends on how many of the electrodes are affected.
For instance, your phone screen is probably expected to develop dead pixels over time, but there is a big difference between expecting a handful of pixels to stop working and expecting half of them to stop working. The former has virtually no effect, whereas the latter makes the phone unusable.
Likewise, the most important question for a brain interface is not “Are all the sensors working?”, it’s “Is the patient experiencing reduced performance?”
Also the timeline that’s expected to happen on. I’d be pretty fucking mad if my phone had dead pixels less than 6 months after buying it. 10 years, not so much.
Likewise, I’d be pretty mad that if a reportable amount of my brain electrodes detached within the first 6 months of having them, but I’d be less mad if it was a few years down the line (not that I’d ever be fully okay with it. This is my brain, after all).
I’d be pretty fucking mad if my phone had dead pixels less than 6 months
That’s because screens are a mature technology. Twenty years ago, you expected one or two dead pixels in every brand new screen.
Here’s an example of a replacement policy from those dark ages:
The LCD display of products under warranty will be replaced if CTL determines that it has 6 or more bright sub-pixels, 6 or more dark sub-pixels or a combination of 6 or more bright and dark sub pixels.
By the same token, medical devices have more built-in redundancies in case of partial failure. That’s why the overall impact on the patient is more important than how many electrodes are operational.
I will admit, I think I’m coming from a place of zero trust that anything musk has his hands in has any amount of safety or redundancy built in, because that might hurt the bottom line
Pretty much every medical device is made by people who are equally interested in the bottom line, they just aren’t constantly in the media spotlight like Musk.
Fortunately there are government agencies that closely watch these companies to make sure patient safety comes first.
The people that actually would benefit from this technology deserve better.
100% correct. The issue is that this is not the goal of those developing this technology, the goal is (checks notes), money… All they care about is money and if some disabled people suffer some more, well, that’s the price they are willing to pay to get richer
Yeh, but the late fees are good for people. Free market and free market. Drain the swamp etc. Just pay your debt on time. Or something, both side the same, yada yada.
A great example of the current presidency trying to do something good for a lot of people.
It’s funny that the literal industry posterboy for not paying debts on time his entire career is now leading that crowd of “just pay your debts” 😂 He still isn’t doing it himself, even with other people putting up the money to pay his debts for him
“Handguns are the most common weapon type used in mass shootings in the United States, with a total of 166 different handguns being used in 116 incidents between 1982 and December 2023. These figures are calculated from a total of 149 reported cases over this period, meaning handguns are involved in about 78 percent of mass shootings.”
Tbh it’s by design. It’s way easier to scare people with the big black scary call of duty gun and convince them to get on board with that, saying “no pistols are fine but those rifles that function the literal same are the issue,” then later you can try to convince people on the pistols with “actually since rifles only accounted for 500/60,000 gun deaths a year we have to ban the pistols now too.”
Mass shouting are 3+, but rifle shootings that makes news stories tend to be much higher 5-8+. And often times the rifle shooters are also using a handgun, so it skews the numbers a bit there too.
But really all guns and especially handguns need better control, permitting, and revocation laws.
Except the stats (art and science) don’t mention that in many of the mass shootings, an AR-15 assault rifle was commonly used. Highly lethal, designed to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time.
I just categorize my concerns to semi-autos; size is irrelevant. Australia went so far as to ban just about all of them, even though that’s a very broad category.
Except by that exact source, mass shootings with rifles are under reported and the deadliest mass shootings were done with semi automatic rifles.
“Since 1982, there has been a known total 65 mass shootings involving rifles, mostly semi-automatics. This figure is underreported though, as it excludes the multiple semi-automatic (and fully automatic) rifles used in the 2017 Las Vegas Strip massacre – the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, killing 58 and wounding 546. In fact, semi-automatic rifles were featured in four of the five deadliest mass shootings, being used in the Orlando nightclub massacre, Sandy Hook Elementary massacre and Texas First Baptist Church massacre.”
Deadliest again is not “most prevalent”. Yes, that is what gets the attention and makes everyone scared, but they are not as common as the media wants everyone to believe.
Your article is from 2014. 10 years ago all of your other checks were NO as well. I can’t find anything recently about atheists with a quick search, just old stuff like that.
Scout Oath “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”
it is, BUT, if you read between the lines of the requirements, there’s plenty of room for pragmatic atheists (in pragmatic packs/troops). It’s not perfect, but overall Scouting has absolutely embraced inclusiveness.
Not when you’re interviewing for your Eagle they haven’t. Describing how you serve your higher power is still a question at the final interview before receiving it. Either you lie as an atheist, or you tell the truth and don’t get your Eagle. So either violate what it’s supposed to mean to be a scout (integrity and honesty) or you throw away what you’ve worked so hard for for years.
And that’s ignoring the fact that many troops are hosted via churches, especially in southern areas.
I can’t argue with that, but I’d have no qualms about “lying” about a ‘‘make believe’’ thing anyway. Tons of kids get their religious award and then never step foot in a church again. It would be very nice if kids could be honest about it though, even just picking a religion to earn the reward for as an academic exercise should be allowed I think learning about how much of a part religion can play in people’s lives, how it affects their judgement, is a good thing for a person to learn about, and perhaps that’s the final test. Respecting the requirement for the sake of the ceremony maybe. Even a (respectful) atheist would take their hat off in a place of worship if asked to.
Maybe a regional/troop thing or my memory is failing me? My interview in 2017 (Iowa) didn’t have a religious question in it iirc; there was a question on how I’d be giving back to my community. Don’t think my interviewers were extremely religious though.
A big part of Scouting, at the organizational level, is fund raising. Without funds, you can’t afford the uniforms or the events or any of the things that make Boy Scouts a social group.
Historically, the Mormon Church has been a major contributor and facilitator of Boy Scout troops, particularly through the American Midwest and Southwest. Catholics and Methodists are other large scale feeders for the organization. Yes, you can read between the lines. But show up with your “pragmatic atheist” merit badge, and you’re not going to be particularly well received by other troops who came up through religious organizations.
Jews and Muslims haven’t have it particularly easy integrating with the Boy Scouts, either.
Start a 4-H Club. They’re run by state universities, so they’re subject to all their policies involving inclusivity and each club is centered on a specific topic. Want a camping/outdoor life club? Easy. Doesn’t have to be Ag related.
As a former 4-Her myself, the 4-H extension office in our region is run by a state university, but the clubs themselves are community-organized. Also, many clubs in our area were general, so you could do any topic covered by the extension office and be a part of the club.
I’m an Eagle and an atheist. I don’t remember being required to confirm a belief. But even though I was part of an organization in a very small very religious town, nobody seemed to care.
The auditing firm for Trump Media and the auditor’s owner were charged Friday with “massive fraud” by the Securities and Exchange Commission for work that affected more than 1,500 SEC filings, the federal regulator announced.
The auditor, BF Borgers CPA and its owner Benjamin Borgers have agreed to be permanently suspended from practicing as accountants before the SEC, and also agreed to pay a combined $14 million in civil penalties, without* admitting or denying the allegations, the SEC said.
So we didn’t find out that the SEC thought this auditor committed criminal conduct until the SEC had already negotiated this settlement where they don’t have to admit any wrongdoing? Bang up job enforcing the laws there guys, that will definitely deter this kind of conduct from other bad actors in the accounting industry /s
*The article actually says “with” there, but the SEC post it links to says “without,” so I’m fairly certain that was a typo in the news article
e; It really should go without saying, but since the conversations on this website have effectively reduced my whole personality to “why aren’t more people talking about how this Democratic administration’s handling of the federal government is falling short of what that party says they stand for,” I feel like I should say I doubt we’d see even this pittance of enforcement out of a Republican government, so, yeah, I sincerely hope these pathetic losers get another four years to keep disappointing me because the alternative is still a hell of a lot worse
Gary gensler just got caught illegally trading crypto soooo. They’re all good old boys breaking the law together and paying “fines” that are just the cost of doing business. The SEC is worse than useless, they’re too busy watching porn to do their jobs.
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