Lunatech @Lunatech@social.cleverlibre.org

In 1985, Neil Postman wrote the book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” where he observes, predicts, and warns about behaviors and trends that would lead Americans to become an empty people incapable of real thought and intolerant to anything that isn’t entertaining. Correctly, he worried that the USA would devolve into a dystopia where citizens demanded news, education, and politics to be amusing above all else and coverage of real, impactful issues would fall away.

When these two headlines appear in the same publication on the same day, I think we’re getting there if we’re not already. If the administration is trying to talk about their real accomplishments and the press covering them wants to shut that down by pretending it’s a waste of time, let’s just say, and yes this is an understatement, that these two matters are related.

Meanwhile, in real news that will affect you that isn’t getting balloon-level coverage-

Column: Mike Pence, would-be president, has a plan to kill Social Security. It will cost you-
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-02-06/launching-a-presidential-bid-mike-pence-proposes-to-kill-social-security

Inviting you to try out this free academic platform, where you simply describe the logic of the game in #English and the system automatically generates the game for you to play and test. It also provides feedback on incorrectly written sentences. https://gc.ece.vt.edu

#EdTech #AI @edutooters

There are 193 member nations in the United Nations.

All but 11 guarantee some form of paid sick leave.

Guess what? The U.S. is one of those 11.

As a result, 33 million American workers have no paid sick leave from their employer.

This is deeply inhumane. Paid leave. Now.

The conversational AI wars commence: https://blog.google/technology/ai/bard-google-ai-search-updates/

Capitalism is so depressing. Looking around and seeing everything be bland and privatized, it's just so... depressing.

Another day, another bunch of right-wing terrorists plotting to destroy America.

https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/criminal-justice/sarah-beth-clendaniel-fbi-energy-substation-plot-KLTNJHK3FNBG5JHT7THIR3GQAY/

#politics #uspol #uspolitics #domesticterrorism #whitenationalism #whitesupremacy #news #maga #trumpism #baltimore #fbi #timothymcveigh

President #Biden will call for expanding a new cap on #insulin prices to all Americans as part of his State of the Union address, the White House said today.

He had imposed a $35/month limit on insulin that took effect in January. But it only applied to #Medicare beneficiaries.

Biden is now expected to renew his push for the policy to be applied to anyone with an insulin prescription, per the White House.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/06/biden-universal-insulin-price-cap-state-of-the-union-00081435?cid=mas

I have to disagree with @mmasnick when he calls Musk's latest maunderings re API access "brain farts" from someone who is clueless about how Twitter works.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/06/elon-promises-a-free-api-for-good-bot-content-again-demonstrating-he-has-no-idea-how-any-of-this-works/

My hypothesis is that the sociopath CEO knows exactly what he's doing: trolling.

Clarence Thomas, Sarah Palin, and Devin Nunes are leading a charge to roll back a landmark Supreme Court decision that protects free speech and make it easier for public officials to win lawsuits against people who criticize them.

Because when the right says we need to protect free speech, they mean they want to protect it for them—and only for them.

By @mmasnick
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/06/its-time-to-codify-the-ny-times-v-sullivan-standard-into-law/

Worth reading: "Voice.AI: GPL Violations with a Side of DRM"

https://undeleted.ronsor.com/voice.ai-gpl-violations-with-a-side-of-drm

#FOSS #OpenSource #AI #ArtificialIntelligence

Looks like there aren't enough right wing trolls, Nazis, anti-vaxxers, tech bros, and Musk fanboys gullible enough to buy into the brave new hardcore world of Twitter Blue https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-has-just-180-000-u-s-subscribers-two-months-after-launch

Notice a pattern? #SocialSecurity #Medicare #Pensions #seniors #benefits #MAGA #GQP #Trumpists #GOP #EnemyOfThePeople #politics #editorialcartoons #cartoon

#cartoonist: Marty Two Bulls

By the way, the same corporations telling us they have no choice but to raise prices are simultaneously spending billions of dollars on stock buybacks to enrich their wealthy shareholders.

"With very few jobs available to women, most who had no independent means or family to return to were forced into the sex trade. They were reviled by New York’s politicos but visited by many of the same men who decried them in the newspapers and pulpits."

#acting

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/charlotte-cushman-broke-barriers-her-way-becoming-list-actress-1800s-180975221/

VMware warned customers today to install the latest security updates and disable the OpenSLP service targeted in a large-scale campaign of ransomware attacks against Internet-exposed and vulnerable ESXi servers.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/vmware-warns-admins-to-patch-esxi-servers-disable-openslp-service/

Microsoft just released a demo of BigGPT-Large, which they define as "a domain-specific generative model pre-trained on large-scale biomedical literature, has achieved human parity, outperformed other general and scientific LLMs, and could empower biologists in various scenarios of scientific discovery."

Here's the response to the first question that I asked: @ct_bergstrom @emilymbender

My op-Ed with Orly Lobel arguing that the FTC’s ban on noncompetes is good for innovation is now published in the Harvard Business Review

https://hbr.org/2023/02/banning-noncompetes-is-good-for-innovation