The internet is filled with things. Here are some of them.
The Days of Shoddy, as the reader will readily anticipate, are the opening months of the present war, at which time the opprobrious name first came into general use as a designation for swindling and humbug of every character; and nothing more need be said to indicate the scope of this novel.But unfortunately that's not the whole story, as I've discovered reading author Steven R. Weisman in his 2018 book The Chosen Wars: How Judaism Became an American Religion. On page 148 in the chapter Anti-Semitism in the North and South he writes:
On the Union side, anti-Jewish prejudice flared over the role of Jews in businesses that profited from the war, often featured in news stories and cartoons depicting Jews as avaricious, disloyal, and greedy. These focused especially on poorly made uniforms made from shredded or discarded fiber known as “shoddy.” Shoddy became an anti-Semitic slur, so widespread was the assumption that it was Jews who produced such goods. “In the media, the theme of ‘shoddy,’ the purported manipulation of financial institutions, the alleged subversive complicity with the Confederacy, the supposed exploitation of military personnel by Jewish camp followers, and the claims of foreign intervention against the interest of the North continued unabated to plague the image of Jews,” the historians Gary L. Bunker and John J. Appel write.
Companies like Apple and Microsoft have, for years, created attractive, high-powered hardware with 8GB of memory in it, most egregiously in $1,000-and-up putative "pro" computers like last year's $1,599 M3 MacBook Pro or the Surface Pro 9. This meant that, for the kinds of power users and professionals drawn to these machines, that their starting prices were effectively mirages
To meet the requirements for Copilot+ label and the marketing push behind it, PCs must have a recent high-end processor, at least 16GB of memory, and at least 256GB of storage. ... Apple's face-turn on the RAM question—its first bump to the Mac's base amount of RAM in 12 years—didn't come tied to any specific feature. ... Whatever the reason, something that had been a flat $200 upgrade to any Mac for years and years was suddenly included in the base price, lowering the prices for all other RAM upgrades by $200 as well.lol
For every earnest, creative filmmaker carefully using AI to enhance what they are doing to tell a better story, there will be thousands of grifters spamming every platform and corner of the internet with keyword-loaded content designed to perform in an algorithm and passively wash over you for the sole purpose of making money. For every studio carefully using AI to make a better movie, there will be a company making whatever, looking at it and saying “good enough,” and putting it out there for the purpose of delivering advertising.To extract from the article one salient point, if I may, it's that there's a reason the first company to lean hard into AI-generated shows is a company only tangential to the entertainment industry who employs zero creators.
Sam Altman [OpenAI CEO and known liar] has grown rich and powerful lying about how GPT will somehow lead to AGI, but at this point, what exactly is OpenAI meant to do? The only way it’s ever been able to develop new models is by throwing masses of compute and training data at the problem, and its only other choice is to start stapling its reasoning model onto its main Large Language Model, at which point something happens, something so good that literally nobody working for OpenAI or in the media appears to be able to tell you what it is. ...Unfortunately, Zitron ends the article by highlighting Bluesky, saying they're "selling an honest product and an open protocol" – except that Bluesky is backed by Cryptocoin scammers, so he's sacrificing credibility by either not knowing this or being a Cryptobro himself.
The revenue isn't coming. The products aren't coming. "Orion," OpenAI's next model, will underwhelm, as will its competitors' models, and at some point somebody is going to blink in one of the hyperscalers, and the AI era will be over. Almost every single generative AI company that you’ve heard of is deeply unprofitable, and there are few innovations coming to save them from the atrophy of the foundation models. ...
I also want to be clear that none of these companies ever had a plan. They believed that if they threw enough GPUs together they would turn generative AI – probabilistic models for generating stuff — into some sort of sentient computer. It’s much easier, and more comfortable, to look at the world as a series of conspiracies and grand strategies, and far scarier to see it for what it is — extremely rich and powerful people that are willing to bet insanely large amounts of money on what amounts to a few PDFs and their gut.
Dear President Trump,
I hope and pray that in your next term in office, you will be a president for all Americans, advancing the principles of democracy, justice, and commitment to rule of law that have been sources of strength for our nation throughout its history.
As an American and a Reform Jew, I am committed to the protection of the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. I will support any serious effort by your administration to combat antisemitism, and I will champion a strong U.S.-Israel relationship that fosters democracy in and security for the Jewish state and demands the rights, well-being, and national aspirations of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank are upheld.
At the same time, I will join in fierce opposition to any further efforts to eviscerate reproductive rights, to target the safety and rights of the LGBTQ+ community, to harm communities of Color, or to undermine the health of our air, water, and land. I will join in defense of the security of immigrants and the right to claim asylum. I will vehemently oppose the weaponization of political power against individuals and institutions that are core to our democracy, including the courts and the press. And above all, I urge an end to the repeated demeaning of women, the use of hateful language against those who hold different views, and the persistent coarsening of our political culture.
We are all made more whole when we treat others with the respect every human being deserves. Please, help heal the wounds our nation bears and govern as a president for all Americans.
Chan said the worker had grown suspicious after he received a message that was purportedly from the company’s UK-based chief financial officer. Initially, the worker suspected it was a phishing email, as it talked of the need for a secret transaction to be carried out. However, the worker put aside his early doubts after the video call because other people in attendance had looked and sounded just like colleagues he recognized, Chan said.
'The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews.' On 27th September 2016, Rabbi Sacks delivered a keynote address entitled 'The Mutating Virus: Understanding Antisemitism' in the European Parliament. The speech opened a conference on the future of Jewish communities in Europe hosted by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament. To read a transcript of the speech, please click here.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Linked is a seven-part series by Silicon Valley veteran Jon Evans dissecting the weird underbelly of the rationalist/effective altruism communities, written in 2022 but surfacing again now due to the downright bizarre (and murderous) ZIzian death cult that's splintered away from ... mainstream rationalism? What in the five fucks is going on inside the rationalism movement that death cults can even exist within its sphere? What business do cults have with rationalism, effective altruism, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, Scott Alexander, and the technological singularity? Evans makes it clear that rationalist thought isn't a cult, but the movement sure is left smelling a lot like the techbro version of Scientology.
In light of this newest rationalist-cult mess spilling out into the larger world, Evans has written a piece updating us about the ZIzians and how their leader faked her own death before spurring several highly-educated data scientists to go about attacking people with swords among other implements of murder.
Ah yes, peak rationality.