As an intellectual exercise, what do you suppose are the chances that Vance is a nazi? I don’t mean ‘nazi’ in a rhetorical sense, and I don’t mean ‘nazi’ in the sense that his worldview and ideologies overlap with those of nazis. I mean, what are the chances that he’s actually in his basement with a brown shirt, seig heil-ing from time to time? It probably doesn’t matter, as long as his civic actions support that cause anyway. But I wonder this each time I hear yet another awful detail about this loser. I peg it at about 10%, low but definitely above zero.

This is part of Obama’s legacy.

This take is correct although I would make one addition. It is true that copyright violation doesn’t happen when copyrighted material is inputted or when models are trained. While the outputs of these models are not necessarily copyright violations, it is possible for them to violate copyright. The same standards for violation that apply to humans should apply to these models.

I entirely reject the claims that there should be one standard for humans and another for these models. Every time this debate pops up, people claim some province based on ‘intelligence’ or ‘conscience’ or ‘understanding’ or ‘awareness’. This is a meaningless argument because we have no clear understanding about what those things are. I’m not claiming anything about the nature of these models. I’m just pointing out that people love to apply an undefined standard to them.

We should apply the same copyright standards to people, models, corporations, and old-school algorithms.

Rich idiots failing upward, unite!

The problem with what creeps like Mann are claiming comes down to the difference between “art” and buying an “interest” in art as a speculative investment. Mann conflates these two ideas, trying to bestow the wholesomeness of artistic expression with his investment business venture. I’m all in favor of getting artists paid, and structuring society in a way that encourages the production of art, but Mann wants to weaken securities regulations and consumer protections to do that. That’s a terrible idea because it will lead to many more people being conned and defrauded.

If investors were merely trying to support an artist’s work, and not seeking to profit from their investment, they wouldn’t need a securities mechanism like NFTs to do it. We already have money for that.

If a side effect of regulating NFTs as securities is to somehow damage the regular fine art marketplace, as I think Mann’s suit is warning, that is no great loss for society. The fine art market is a blight, a fraud-riddled playground for ultra wealthy douchebags to sequester wealth and does nothing to advance art or promote the creation of artworks writ large.

Mann has ridden the crypto speculative bubble and has an inflated impression of the value of his work. He’s carved out a niche as a sort of court jester for billionaires like Mark Andreesen who want to rebuild financial systems in a way that would dismantle the regulatory state and enshrine an elite class as technologically empowered feudal lords. He thinks the money is compensation for his songs, but it’s largely just a side effect of crypto bros forever trying to find a greater fool to hold the bag in a pyramid scheme. In that effort, his lawsuit is basically a marketing campaign for his investment business. I hope the court puts an end to this once and for all, but I’m not optimistic.

‘This is outrageous,’ said the spokesperson from Meta. ‘Spying and tracking and manipulating domestic politics is something private industry does, not some creepy foreign agency.’

How about reigning in Israel and not, like, genociding. That would be nice.

Joe Biden is a fucking monster. He and his State Department toadies are criminally liable for the atrocities they are perpetrating. Furthermore, Harris owns ALL this now that she pulled the mask off at her DNC coming out speech. Don’t come at me pointing at the hollow, uninspired gestures she made to humanity in her speech. She made it very very clear that she’s fully locked in to both excusing and fueling the genocide of Palestinians just like her beloved mentor.

I’m going to start calling it the ‘camera tumor’. Thanks for that.

Don’t forget that Donahue was fired from MSNBC in 2003 for providing critical coverage of the US invasion of Iraq.

Is RFK a character in an ARG? What is happening on this timeline?

“The matrix.” Dude, you are a billionaire. You hang out with billionaires, and the most powerful public officials in the world. You are the matrix. Fuck off with this gaslighting fake-populist bullshit.

When assholes like Musk and Friedman say garbage like this, they are advocating for taking away people’s power. People as collective wield power through government. They want to, instead, concentrate power in a small ruling elite class of oligarchs. It’s fundamentally un-democratic, and un-American.

People who un-ironicaly listen to Jesse Waters transition into idiots.

The US has nearly unilaterally vetoed all international attempts to impose accountability on Israel in the UN forever. You’re mischaracterizing the world’s attitude about this. I never suggested that Biden can (or even should) deny all aid. Bit listen, I get it. I know it’s easier to rationalize horrific war crimes when you delude yourself into thinking that no one bears responsibility and no one has any power to change things.

I fully recognize that Republicans are lock step in favor of genocide. I’m pointing at the current administration because it’s, well, the current administration. They set foreign policy. They approve the arms sales. They provide logistical support to the IDF. They veto UN resolutions. They lie, obfuscate and gaslight the press and constituents who are protesting. Biden has enormous power but is ideologically devoted to the genocide. He has been the only president since Israel’s campaign started. For you to suggest that he doesn’t have agency here, that he doesn’t have responsibility for US policy, that he should be somehow excused from accountability, is nonsensical and a recipe for never accomplishing anything ever. I’m not surprised to hear a such defeatist attitude, as this has basically been the defining characteristic of the Democratic Party for about 40 years. It’s this cowardly, weak sauce, no fight approach to public policy that has facilitated American fascism’s advance to the brink. I have no patience for such bullshit.

It should be noted that, since Israel is only able to operate like this because of the financial, materiel, and diplomatic support of the United States, these are US crimes. We are doing this. Officials in the Biden administration, and it’s State Department should be held criminally liable for these crimes. Now is the time to hold Harris politically responsible for starting to fix our mess.

Regarding the plan to give parents more voting power by assigning them an extra vote for each of their children, which parent gets to cast those extra votes? If I have three kids, do I get to cast four votes, or do they get split between me and my wife? Somehow I doubt he is suggesting that mothers get all this extra voting power, right? I’m sure the couch fucker believes that it’s a husband’s duty to officiate these extra votes for his family. Actually, I’m sure he thinks a husband should preside over his wife’s vote as well.

What a man of the people.

Just to clarify what I said: I know that there are good people working in these corporations, and I know that good sometimes happens. What I am saying is that the organization itself doesn’t care the way they are often given credit for by their own marketing, media coverage, and public perception. The incentives that are foundational to these organizations are antithetical to achieving anything beyond revenue that is either widespread or long-term in nature. I am all in favor of holding corporations accountable, and pressuring them to be better members of our society, but people should never fool themselves into thinking that meaningful, sustainable change on social or environmental issues will ever result from actions taken by corporations. Those kinds of changes can only come from governments that are open and accountable to their people, and have the confidence to check the actions of private industry.

Anything that corporations do, that isn’t directly oriented toward revenue generation, is window dressing, marketing, and bullshit. They don’t actually care about addressing social ailments like inequity, they don’t care about environmental destruction. While individuals within these organizations may believe in these causes, the machine itself is just lying when they parade these initiatives out. They don’t care about their workforce (beyond maintaining functionality), and they certainly don’t care about their society. If these corporations were people, they’d be considered sociopaths, with ZERO exceptions.