Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@social.cleverlibre.org

I don't think I've ever actually smelled Drakkar Noir before, but judging exclusively by sitcom references, it must be awful.

@briannawu Wtf, baking a cake is an order of magnitude more effort than tightening some screws. That's bonkers!

Something strange just happened.

In December, I bought some sports memorabilia for my brother from Fanatics.com.

Since then, I've been inundated with #marketing #spam emails for the team that was branded on the item I bought, from multiple companies, mostly #Ticketmaster (who I've never done business with).

Today, I filled out a survey sent to me by Fanatics. I chose "Other" as the reason I'd rate them 0/10, and then typed in the box that they spammed me and I was reporting them to the #FTC (which I am, because the unsubscribe links don't even work).

I was then taken to a page that informed me that I was automatically being removed from all marketing lists based on my response... which was free-form text entered into a box.

In my mind, that would seem to indicate they know what they're doing is so wrong and illegal that they specifically wrote algorithms to look for related words (maybe "spam" or "FTC"), instead of offering "Marketing Emails" as a direct choice (remember, I had to choose "other" to enter this). So, they're concealing their wrongdoing too.

Anyway, I don't think any of this is #illegal, but it is #shady as fuck, so maybe don't ever do any business with #Fanatics

@mcrocker @dangillmor Which tells you that the "science experiments" offer more value to those people than they take.

For example: I don't sign up for grocery store rewards programs because they're gross violations of privacy, but most people do. They just see a different value proposition than I do.

@dangillmor Or you can just choose to opt-out of those "black-box science experiments".

If nobody used them, they'd vanish in a heartbeat.

But that requires self-control, which so few people seem to possess.

@CynicAgeing@ohai.social That would never work in America because we value free speech too much.

No, but it does become more likely as one gets older. We pine for "the good old days" and resist change. It's why every generation thinks the generation before is bigoted. Because "bigotry" meant something different to them.

And if someone tries to sell them the lie that the world can go back to how they remember it, some are foolish enough to want to buy that lie.

Made a traditional corned beef and cabbage meal for dinner tonight... delicious freshly-simmered corned beef and cabbage on dark pumpernickel with horseradish sauce and a side of boiled potatoes. Classic and delicious!

@jeffjarvis There are a number of scifi properties in which automatons use "one" and "oneself" as their pronouns for this very reason.

@lupyuen ...they're about a decade too late for that.

@gpowerf I strongly disagree with this. The biggest problem with current models is people's propensity to anthropomorphize them and see reason and logic where there is none. "Humanizing" them would just exacerbate that problem further.

@nntaleb No, the problem with ChatGPT is that people keep anthropomorphizing it because it can string a few words together.

It can't bullshit because it can't reason.

@eamonn_kerins My guess would be that the two-week-long nights would make battery weights infeasible for long-term stays on solar. Nuclear would be more reliable, and may ultimately provide a better bang-for-the-buck when it comes to how much mass we have to drag out of our gravity well...

Sure is nice of Walmart to discount this 3-year-old last generation game 75% from its original price of... $100?

I thought this kind of deceptive shit was illegal.