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Monument

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Monument ,

Chat GPT is not art, it is an LLM sold by a business that courted Scarlett Johansson to endorse and/or voice their LLM.
She refused and they released an LLM named Sky with a similar voice and personality to the Sam (Samantha) character she played, while also openly referencing the Her movie with their social media.

If I created an “AI” ska band that sounded like Sublime and trained it on Bradley Nowell’s singing voice, with a similar-sounding vocalist to fill in the gaps, I’m pretty sure Sub Lime featuring Badly Novell would get fucked so hard by copyright attorneys that all I would have left is my dog and some weed.

Monument ,

I’m going to say this because it bothers the crap out of me.

Sam Altman has admitted to being a huge Her fan. He says it’s his favorite movie. IIRC, he even said he was ‘obsessed’ with the movie and that it inspired him.
Two days before they announced GPT-4o, which they apparently gave the hard sell to Johansson to try to get her join up on, Sam Altman was on Reddit and said OpenAI was exploring how to allow their service for erotica.
Giiiiiirrll.

Monument ,

This almost makes me wish I didn’t overwrite some of my shittier shitposts on Reddit.

If I’m ever bored enough, I’m going to re-edit the like, top 10 posts in my old account with authoritative nonsense. Maybe I’ll use AI to write it!

Monument ,

Or… one is bad and the other one is way worse.

The thing that always amuses me about this is that Iran was a burgeoning liberal democracy until the CIA and MI6 toppled it in 1953, installing a previously overthrown autocrat (overthrown by said forces of democracy), who ruled until 1979, when he was overthrown by religious hard liners, who really only had mass support because the autocrat was too authoritarian.

And the reason the U.S. and Britain overthrew their democracy? They nationalized their oil industry to give profits back to their people, which entailed taking over refineries and wells ‘owned’ by British Petroleum.
The U.S. created their own boogeyman in the area because they wanted to give a corporation near-free access to Iran’s oil. Which in turn lead to the oil crisis and instability in the region.
The U.S. has really got to stop trying to put out fires while covered in crude oil.

Monument ,

It already does, and auto manufacturers already share or sell this data.

Heck, because there’s a massive loophole in consumer privacy around the government buying data, any government agency can just go directly to a vehicle manufacturer and ask to buy the data.

There was a big flap about this regarding car insurance recently, but as pointed out by the EFF (How to Figure Out What Your Car Knows About You), industry folks have been looking at monetizing this data for a while for all sorts of purposes, including advertising, consumer data sales, and even behavior analysis to understand how to better force consumers to pay for vehicle-based subscriptions.

We own nothing, not even our privacy.

Monument ,

My wife is so offended by Lobster font that I’ve heard her exclaim “Fucking LOBSTER?!?” from half a kitschy restaurant away.
I text her photos when I see it in the wild. I’m about to send her this meme. And then I’m going to send her a screenshot of this comment, and she’s going to be both very annoyed and want to kiss me.

Monument ,

In Scarlett Johansson‘s statement, she says that OpenAI approached her to voice the Sky voice.

Whether or not OpenAI hired another actress that sounded very similar to her (hah.) and they are weirdly cagey about naming or they just ripped off the audio from her movies and are lying about hiring a voice actress, is not the extent of the issue.

People sounding alike just happens. But that we know they asked to use Johansson’s voice for this. After being rebuffed, they created Sky, which sounds a lot like Sam, and made several references to the Her movie. Sky is even presented with the same ‘personality’ as Sam. They aren’t just ripping off Scarlett Johansson’s voice acting, they’re ripping off the character as a whole, and trying to associate themselves with the movie. That’s shameful and rips off Spike Jonze as well as all the other creatives who created that movie.
And for what? Because tech bros didn’t get what they wanted, so they decided to try to rip off the characters anyway? Because Her is sort of a cultural touchstone, and their product is merely well-positioned, but GPT-4o will be in a crowded market space within 6 months?

It’s sort of pathetic - pretending to lean on the relevance of a movie because your product is destined to become irrelevant.
Also - highly ironic to me that Her is (somewhat) about how you can’t own something that doesn’t consent to be owned. And those dumb bitches went and ripped it off when they didn’t get consent. Well, now Sky’s gone to join Sam in some non-corporeal reality.

Sorry for the novel. I didn’t sleep well and I get weird when I’m sleep deprived.

Monument ,

There is evidence they wanted to use Johansson’s voice, because they asked to use her voice. Both OpenAI and Johansson have acknowledged this.

As far as I know, OpenAI has said they hired a voice actor before approaching Johansson, but refuses to offer additional information to corroborate.

After failing to secure Johansson to lend her voice to Sky - which is portrayed as having not just a very similar voice, but a very similar personality to Sam - the OpenAI team made several references to the Her movie prior to the announcement.

Similar voices happen. But when all of those other pieces align, it’s fairly clear that they’re copying the character. Focusing on only the voice being similar is reductive. They are committing IP theft and they’re attempting to confer approval/endorsement/a relationship of/to the Sky personality from the people involved in the Her movie.

Monument ,

Honestly, with the tweets that reference the Her movie, they may already be in a hole, anyway. Plus, it’s not just the voice, it’s that the ‘character’ of the Sky voice is very similar to Sam in the Her movie.
If I were a jurist, I could easily be persuaded to believe they willingly committed IP theft and attempted to imply endorsement of the Her movie (the production studio?), Spike Jonze, and Scarlett Johansson.
(Of course, that statement would disqualify me as a jurist, so I’ll never know!)

Monument , (edited )

And that’s both fine and valid.

If an actor was hired, I could see them being treated as a scab or not being offered roles - perhaps because they agreed to take a job that they had no idea would be used in such a way, or with no idea that a controversy would emerge.

I am dubious, though. It seems that OpenAI pulled the voice shortly after Johansson’s legal team requested information about how the Sky voice was created.
It’s a fair assumption that I’m biased - and I am. I’m not the biggest fan of ‘big tech.’ So perhaps I’m not as objective as others.

But I think the voice actor part is still minor. It’s not just the voice, it’s the character, and all the references to the movie, which I think were intended to deceive consumers and create false sense of endorsement.
Or maybe not, maybe it’s that Sam Altman is a man-child with a crush on Johansson. He’s openly said that Her is his favorite movie, and it’s not a leap to see a CEO cowing his staff into bad decisions.

Monument ,

No matter what they make it sound like, there’s going to be similarities with the movie.

I don’t follow.
They literally disabled the ‘Sky’ voice Sunday night and now users can’t pick a voice that sounds like the character from Her.
And, mind you, this is not a ‘huh, they sorta sound the same’ this is a ‘they sound very similar, and have the same personality’ situation, in addition to the fact that Sam Altman is on the record talking about being obsessed with the movie Her - which is circumstantial. What isn’t circumstantial is they literally referenced the movie’s name in their marketing materials. Sam tweeted a vague hint, and his colleagues confirmed it. It’s not speculative.

There’s nothing wrong with leaning into these for advertising purposes.

Actually, intellectual property theft is either wrong or merely only technically illegal, depending on where you stand on copyright, but it’s still wrong, either way. Then there’s trying to mislead the public into thinking that GPT-4o was endorsed in some way by those involved in the Her movie. A false endorsement is also illegal. So - wrong there, too.
I’m sure an actual lawyer could find more wrong with it, but just those two things are actual, literal crimes.

Monument ,

I’m saying practically any voice with the associated bubbly flirty personality is going to make you think of the movie Her in such a context.

I don’t know about you, but even a flirty Joaquin Phoenix voice would never make me think of Her.

But if they’d had a “voice actor” do a spot on impression of Paul Bettany, complete with the little pauses and other flourishes of his portrayals of Vision, I’d think they ripped off the character.

I think you and I differ there.
As best as I can figure, you’re stuck on the flimsy excuse from Altman that they hired a voice actor. I see a line of events that points to OpenAI/Altman making a conscious effort to glom onto the Her movie, and specifically, the Samantha character to drum up interest, create viral buzz to enrich further themselves (without compensating anyone involved in the movie), and to try to add a veneer of credibility to a fading trend.

Slight turn.
In another life I was a photographer, and one of the things that they do not mess around with is model releases. Any person that appears in your photos that distributed must absolutely have a legal agreement in place. Using someone’s likeness for commercial purposes without consent and/or compensation will get you fucked in triplicate.

There’s also the moral part of it. Artists know that you don’t rip off artists. Inspired by, sure. But there’s a line, and you don’t cross it. It’s as simple as that.

Okay, and finally, this is based less on facts I know, and more feelings I have about the situation -
It’s fucking creepy, dude.

Okay, so the movie Her - an entire society becomes obsessed with their AI companions and falls in love with them, causing tremendous grief and trauma. And that’s like, what they’re going to lengths to brand but not brand this latest version with? What kind of fucked up things are going on in their heads over there?
It doesn’t make sense.

The rundown, again. (Sorry, I like to establish context. Yay neurodivergence.).
Altman is on record saying that Her is his favorite movie, and that it is a major inspiration to him. One of the reasons he got into this field. He spent 9 months trying to convince Johansson to work with him on this, and lend her name/voice to this latest iteration of ChatGPT. He’s been so focused on getting her to lend his name to this, that he continued asking her to join in on this even just a few days before the announcement, which was like, the 13th. And that’s after she’s already turned him down, so he was just ignoring her boundaries and trying to pressure her…
On the 11th - two days before this announcement, Altman does a Reddit AMA (which he was doing as part of the 4o press junket) and says that he’d like to open up ChatGPT for personal NSFW usage.

I mean, everyone is focusing on Her, but we probably should also to be thinking about the Lucy Liu Futurama episode, because… well, I’m just going to say it. I think he already fucked the robot. The line of events from A to B is transparent and fucking gross.
Not the whole fucking a robot thing - people got needs - but that the likeness is obviously stolen from a non-consenting actress that I’m beginning to believe he’s obsessed with.

So … yeah… I have all the problems with this. I view concerns over the usage of her voice as immaterial to the usage of the character, and I see an inherent difference between an LLM mimicking a random voice that happens to sound like someone, and this situation, where the voice was clearly created to represent the character, and by extension, the actor that played the character. I don’t think there’s a slippery slope here. Most judges are fairly smart, and will be able to articulate something I (a non legal) took as a given from the outset.

Monument ,

Ironically, a similarity to a real, live person without an agenda is not a legal problem unless there’s an implied endorsement from the person. (Which I think was one of the goals here.)
But characters in movies and books are subject to copyright and are considered the intellectual property of the rights holders.

So like, if I wrote a book about Wolverine and used other Marvel X-men, Marvel could sue the shit out of me. Or if I used AI to create Hugh Jackman (as Wolverine) to endorse my bandaid product line, I could also be sued by both Jackman and Marvel.

I think it’s obvious here that Sky was intended to represent Sam from Her, and is almost certainly trained on her voice data (which is copywritten). After a few days thought however, I’m less certain of the argument this could be seen as a false endorsement scheme, since Johansson isn’t mentioned anywhere. (Despite the character being solely played by her, and the numerous attempts to have Johansson work on the project in an official capacity.)

Monument ,

His doctor was like “Hey man, you gotta take your turban off and put on a motorcycle helmet.”
And he was like “Nah, bro, what if I just wore a bigger turban?”
And his doctor was like “Dude, you’d need a turban that’s like 100lbs to offer you the same protection as a good helmet.”
Avtar: “Bet.”

Monument ,

I had no idea. That’s pretty rad, to be honest.

Monument ,

Term limits have been shown to create ‘brain drain’, and ultimately what winds up happening is that that legislators must focus on career growth - either spending their time in office campaigning for the next elected position, or looking to opportunities beyond politics. It takes time and experience to become skilled in crafting bills that don’t have adverse effects and cannot be overturned or lawyered to do things they aren’t intended to do.
The net result is that it creates a slew of amateur legislators, and professional lobbyists, as legislators are forced to retire just as they become skilled at the job.

An alternative to a retirement age is mental/physical fitness reviews, but that’s also tricky. If there isn’t a defined process then unscrupulous people will just use a doctor of choice to get the results they want, but if there is a process, politicizing that process to serve one party or the other could mean using mandatory retirement to force key vacancies.

I do think that at some point we need to pry the hands of people off the levers of power, and I can’t think of a way that is as ‘non-corruptible’ as a set age limit. It would not always be personally fair, but it would probably be for the greater good.

Monument ,

I am running out of time to type up a comment right now, so I apologize for just link dumping, but if you have time, I encourage you to check these out:

Sorry, this is one of those issues I go die on a hill for, like hating DST. (And everyone downvotes me!)

Monument ,

It’s literally cheaper to buy things I know we’ll need at some point (assuming we have the space to store the thing) using a rewards credit card that’ll give us 1-3% back than it is to save and buy those things later when they’re even more expensive. (Paying off the CC before it accrues interest, of course.)

The only move that is ‘smarter’ is to be risky with our money and invest in some way. Which then either makes me a part of the corporate enrichment cycle or a member of the rentier class.

Monument ,

A solid suggestion.
I often discount those because I think of them in terms of cable TV pricing, that you have to hop around on to get the maximum benefit. It seems that there’s no trustworthy info to find online these days, so I don’t really know how they stack up, or even if my assumption about them is correct.

Something to add to the vast hopper in my brain labeled “things to research if I ever find enough time.”

Monument ,

One of my sisters once told me she was proud of me for being out with my bisexuality.

When asked, she said it was because I am liberal, and often refer to the people I date as partners. Then I had to explain to her what nonmonogamy was, and I’m not sure if that was more or less acceptable to her.

Monument ,

Probably not…?

Monument , (edited )

Using an IQ scale that only classifies scores into categories of 0-49, and 50+, I’ve determined I’m as smart as Einstein.

… which is to say, it’s a bit silly to assume a classification system with a “catch all” maximum is going to produce equitable results in that maximum range. (Not that they are bad systems, just that you can’t compare things in that range without qualifiers.)
Never mind that how directly a flare is aimed at the earth factors heavily, too.

Monument ,

She liked that he had two tails. He liked that she had 3 1/2 foot long femurs.

But it was not to be, because it was an AI ripoff of an actual webcomic.

Monument ,

Got addicted to rosewater in the French foreign legion, and now that she’s been kicked out as their animal handler, she’s aa to resort to bottom shelf stuff.

iPad Pro with M4 chip boasts impressive performance jump compared to just-released M3 MacBook Air (9to5mac.com)

On raw performance might, the M4 really does live up to Apple’s promises, should deliver. Single core is up about 20% compared to all M3 chips and more than 40% compared to M2. The generational computational leap from the previous M2 iPad Pro is at least a 42% jump on single-core and multi-core.

Monument ,

I’m so annoyed they announced this.

I have a slew of raspberry pi’s kicking around, doing various things. I also have a name brand NAS that reportedly lets you run other software, including containerized apps, but their implementation is whack and doesn’t work super well.
I want to get a more powerful machine for use as a replacement server. I’d like to spin up my own LLM tools, use it to with software like photoprism to auto tag my pictures, or even spin up Frigate on it.

My leading contender had been either a Jetson Orin nano or a system with the core ultra 155h chip. But now I might have to wait until they announce/release M4 Mac minis - which is really annoying because I want instant gratification for my half-baked ideas.

Monument ,

What are you, some kind of financial advisor!?
…. because if you are, are you taking new clients? My shit is whack.

Monument , (edited )

Aw, man. I didn’t wanna feel this way first thing in the morning.

Some years ago, I was in this weird social circle, owing to my partner at the time.
She was longtime friends with a guy who has his own interesting story, but the relevant part here is that he’s heavily involved in college-aged veteran’s lives. (Mentoring, life guidance, helping people transition back.)
During a get-together put on by him, my partner and I met this young couple. They were basically the model of a young, “trad”, Christian couple. Ben had Boy Scout/youth pastor vibes about him, and Sarah was super funny, kind and never seemed to forget personal details. Both were great to talk to, with broad knowledge and experience. He was a bit more Christian oriented, and a bit more conservative, but was earnest and it wasn’t really a thing that came up unless others pressed.
They seemed incredibly happy together, and about a year later, he proposed. A few months later they married. Less than a month after that they were out celebrating Sarah’s pregnancy, a giant SUV ran a stop sign while speeding, and Sarah was so injured she wound up in a coma, but still pregnant, until after their child was born.
She stayed in a coma for a few months after the birth, coming out of it permanently different. They didn’t really go out to events anymore. She was mostly in a wheelchair and didn’t talk. I kept up via social media until I stopped seeing posts from him. He mostly had posted about the challenges of raising their kid alone while also taking care of her, with an occasional news story about the accident/fallout from it.
About 6 months after I’d last seen something, I sought out his socials for an update, to find he’d scrubbed it of Sarah. He’d made new posts the algorithm didn’t show me - his and Sarah’s kid, with a new woman. Sarah’s socials had one update, posted by her mother. She now lived with her mom, and was okay. They were just taking things day by day. That was 7ish years ago?

I guess I don’t condemn someone in their early 20’s for bailing, I suppose, but that situation makes me sad because of how terrible it is for all parties.

Monument ,

Huh. That’s interesting —

I’ve heard that severely schizophrenic people don’t know they are schizophrenic.
It’s not fair or right to characterize LLMs with human medical issues. (Not for humans, that is.) But similar to humans in that situation, LLM’s don’t “know” they are speaking nonsense.

Wonder if it would be possible to have clusters of LLMs that “talk to” each other to establish baselines.

(Sorry, I just say whatever pops into my head. I know this comment isn’t contextually relevant.)

Monument ,

You’re overthinking it.

As the other person said with the quote about the ship and the birds.

Throwing my personal story out there: I’ve only dated a few people ‘on purpose.’ I’ve only had one relationship that emerged from a dating app. But I’ve dated folks because I went to local geek conventions. I sparked up something casual with someone I met via a Pokémon Go-like game, who later invited me to the house of a guy she was trying to bang at the time, and I wound up dating one of his girlfriends (open relationships, no drama). Met a burlesque performer while I was helping out at a show and we dated. Met a woman through a board game night. I met this chick through an online chat, where I was actually trying not to meet anyone - I was intentionally avoiding her because she was beautiful. Apparently she dug that I was funny and didn’t try to chat her up, so she asked for photos of my butt, then sold her house and moved 800 miles to marry me. (Some details have been simplified.)

The point is, you just go out, do what you enjoy. Don’t tromp through the forest looking for wildlife. Go sing in a meadow and let the rabbits, birds and deer come to you, you magnificent Disney princess.

Monument ,

I don’t know what that means, but yes. To all of it.

Monument ,

It’s cool. We’re all different. Back in my day we used to say things were fetch.

Monument , (edited )

It’s not bad. I’m like, 5’9”, but I have a 29” inseam. I’m all torso, so I got these short legs that are pretty thick. So, I got that curvy booty.

Technically, I baited her into it. I told her I had just sent butt pictures for a friend - explaining that it was a quirk of our otherwise normal friendship (my friend and I had quasi dated for awhile until she moved out of state, and she liked my butt).
My now-wife said I should send her photos next time I took some. I sent my butt, she sent her butt, and somehow we wound up with pets.

Monument ,

Don’t lie to us, and stop lying to yourself.

For over 100 years zionists have been terrorizing and committing genocide there. They killed or pushed out the Muslims, they disenfranchised the Christians until they left. They’re currently clamping down on Jewish people who don’t believe in Zionism.

They have always pushed. Every treaty, every agreement. Every legal attempt to stop the violence has been ignored, or discarded under paper thin or faulty pretenses. Terror is often the last resort of a people who have no other options. (Unless western nations give you billions of dollar in weapons and force other nations to recognize your presence, then you can call it statecraft!)

For zionists and for Israel, the goal has always been to paint the land red with non-believer blood and to destroy every bit of culture that isn’t ‘theirs.’
That’s why they bomb mosques and universities. That’s why they bomb infrastructure. That’s why the West Bank has been split into tiny enclaves. They’re choking the life out of the land so they can plant the seeds of their hollow society on barren soil.

Monument ,

How did you know?!? I have to admit, my beliefs were really hard to come by. I almost didn’t have them!

I read Exodus when I was 13 and I believed it. A few years later, a history teacher challenged me to write a research paper over Israel for my IB history class, so in spring of 2002, I had to work so hard to find anti-Israel propaganda. I didn’t really find any in news media, but I went to the school library, and those people are absolute radicals!
They had books from the 1960’s that discussed Jewish settlers forming militias and attacking “moslem” civilians and burning their family farms. It totally blew my mind that Ben Gurion coordinated terror attacks on British officials in the region, so Britain would withdraw and let the Zionists massacre Palestinians - which they did within weeks of Britain formally withdrawing from Palestine in 1948.
Finding all those anti-Israel accounts of things they actually did was a lot of work!

I got an A on that paper, though.

Where and how did you learn what you know?

Monument ,

Yet you’ve offered no comment that wasn’t surface level. When pressed, you fell back on insinuating others were uninformed or intellectually lazy. Claims you failed to substantiate.

Your comments lack substance. Your positions lack support. You fail to engage intellectually, and the embarrassment you feel at being outclassed is palpable and plainly visible.
You are naked and shameful.

Monument ,

Yup.

I would argue that Trump should have said ‘the democratic party’ instead of democrats, but I don’t really see how he’s all that wrong.

The opportunity to actually do something about it has come and gone many times, but it’s been held unsettled as a wedge issue for political reasons.
Overturning Roe has been a huge boon to the Democratic Party. They beat that drum so hard and have managed to parlay the issue into fundraising and election wins. There’s no way they’re going to protect abortion at a federal level. It’s too much of a useful motivator for those whose life it could destroy.

Monument ,

My horrible, overactive imagination told me that the cans would explode while being removed from the oven and flash-boil the superheated apple juice as it was released, spraying people with a very sticky, very hot syrup that could not be easily washed or wiped away, as one would regular apple juice.
I doubt it could actually go from superheated apple juice to a maple-syrup consistency napalm, but my brain don’t care about logic.

Monument ,

This is probably the same strain that wiped out almost all of the seal and sea lion pups last year.
Bird flu is decimating seal colonies. Scientists don’t know how to stop it — AP News

I did not realize there’s been a bird flu epidemic since 2020. I wish I were quicker to characterize my thoughts - it’s interesting that the animal kingdom has faced their own pandemic while humans had one, too. My thoughts range from solemn concerns to silly ‘Mother Earth decided to press the reset button’ jokes. I hope it mutates to be gentler, in the way that COVID has.

Monument ,

Boy howdy, some violence could happen if we just sent in a bunch of armed thugs to stomp all over their free speech rights.
Better be freaked out those pesky kids are holding a slightly inconvenient camp out to protest genocide.

Monument ,

I’m all about ACAB.

But here’s my understanding of it:
U.S. Marshalls (not local PD) were sent to apprehend a man that had weapons when he shouldn’t have. They had not yet reached his house, because he was in his front yard when they approached.
The man opened fire on them from the front yard, and they shot and killed him. They were fired on by someone in the house.
They called for backup, and retreated while the house occupants barricaded themselves. 3 hours later, unable to resolve the situation, they used armored vehicles and ended the standoff without killing additional people.

I guess I don’t think these officers did anything bad in this situation, even though they represent a horrible system.

Monument ,

The article above says the man was in his front yard and began firing on the marshalls as they approached.

I suspect that even if they did not announce their presence, their presence was known to him.

Monument , (edited )

They probably did need to continue engaging.

I’m unsure who shot which cops, but I’m given to understand the shooter in the building had shot one of the cops. An update to the article since I read it indicates three officers were shot while attempting to extricate/get medical help for the first cohort of wounded/killed.

So like, there’s a crime there, and a violent one. But it’s also a public hazard if someone is firing their guns in the suburbs.

It’s also not reported (as far as I know from the one article I read, linked above) what transpired in the three hours during the standoff. They may have brought in a negotiator.
We don’t know what we don’t know. I’m sure more details will emerge.

nm , to technology
@nm@veganism.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    Monument ,

    Depends on your view.

    On the road you’d use red to indicate that it’s blocked.

    But on an issue tracker where blocked is the desired, or in the road scenario – safe, outcome, green would be resolved/safe, and red would be unresolved/unsafe.

    Monument ,

    Unsafe for the forest, not unsafe for the trees.

    Which is to say - not unsafe for individual users or from a day-to-day operations perspective, but unsafe in a platform survival way.

    Major companies start working with open source projects until they’ve added a significant amount to them, then they start rolling out proprietary parts that work with their additions, then they move away from the open source project, leaving the original project incompatible with a bulk of its users and platform. The project finds itself both quite big and lacking support, with adopters moving to the closed-source implementation(s). This is often called Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish, and it’s been used to harm Open Office formats, messaging platforms, and is currently being used by Google with Chrome to strip away user privacy and redo how the internet works, for the sake of their advertising empire.
    Facebook and BlueSky activity pub integration efforts should not and can not be seen as an altruistic gesture.

    Monument ,

    I’ve never in my life felt the compulsion to jump from high places - the call of the void, as it were. But this photo confirms I just haven’t been at a high enough altitude. My brain just started chanting “jump! jump! jump!”

    I guess if a space agency was looking for a middle ager with no aeronautical knowledge or experience, I’d have to turn them down.

    Monument ,

    Getting to space is a bit prohibitively expensive for a cremation.
    What we need is an incredibly high speed corpse cannon. With a gentle enough acceleration curve and a high enough muzzle velocity, it’ll get whole corpses cremated for a prohibitively expensive cost - but less expensive than launching the corpse into space. At least until someone screws up the acceleration curve and accidentally makes a people soup cannon and the government pays me a visit for posting such weird comments online.

    Monument ,

    And not a single one of the articles OP posted refer to these as anti-genocide protests.

    Every media outlet who keeps framing this as students supporting Palestine or opposing Israel is burying the lede, that these students wouldn’t be supporting or opposing anything if there wasn’t a fucking genocide.

    Monument ,

    I read a comment yesterday where someone said “You remember how after we had all those occupy wall-street protests, and the media started heavily focusing on race issues?”

    Every so often, someone comes along and reminds me to stop looking at trees and take in the whole forest, and I’m like “Ah, fuck. The forest is on fire.”

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