The Infowars news is funny, yes. But more importantly, it is an outright rebuke of Alex Jones' evil.

It's testament to the strength and resilience of the Sandy Hook families who survived this bullshit for more than a decade as well as the Onion, which didn't give up on this for the last 18 months.

Sorry to be overly sincere for a second, but here's why we decided to persevere through all of the bullshit and take over InfoWars.

There's just gotta be a line somewhere.

Thank you @pablo.show for letting me talk so openly about this.

In the same manifesto, Palantir's owners argued that we need a national military draft, that soft power is over, and that we were too hard on Germany and Japan after World War II. I don't think that company should be allowed to exist anymore.

Is copyright the correct tool for enforcing that?

I sure as hell don't know and I don't wish to litigate that. But it is a tool we have historically had and it could be argued that I have the copyright to my likeness.

If that's the legal framework we have to work in, I won't complain.

But I'll add that some skin in this game that I have and am sensitive to?

Almost certainly there are people using AI tools to copy my likeness and create videos posing as me. This happens routinely to other creators.

I actually do think this is something which should not be allowed!

If you're arguing against the concept of copyright, cool. But what's really happening here is people are saying "we used to think this wasn't cool" and they're questioning why now all of a sudden they're being suggested to ignore that.

I mean, we're humans and we're making the rules.

I would actually very much like us to treat machines with different rules than humans. Your thought exercise insists this is something we cannot do but I fundamentally disagree and not for reasons of protecting the copyright system.

Because in case it's not clear, the existence of the robot isn't the issue

It's what people are doing with the robot. And if that's going to cause societal change on the level that these techbros are openly telling us they will, then yeah maybe we need to say "this is not okay" and put a stop to it

That's an assertion you made up in your head.

Even if you take the position that it was inevitable someone would one day create a robot which can check every book out of the library and instantly learn all that knowledge, we *should* be having a discussion on whether that's right or fair.

I know this sounds patronizing and condescending but the thing is, given this topic and the weird bots it invites (like the one I just had to block) I kind of *have to* speak obliquely or else the conversation gets hijacked.

I don't love it either, but there's intention behind what I'm doing.

This is not meant to be snarky, but I do want to make sure you're clicking through on these posts and reading some comments to see if you can figure out what the context is.

I know people don't do this because if they did they probably wouldn't ask the same question five others already did.

Again,

The conversations are always going past each other because the concerns are fundamentally different.

The latter group is less concerned about the utility of these tools and far more concerned with a public who can't see the AI companies are just building spicy, fraudulent SaaS platforms.

Re: the current moment

Perhaps a big disconnect comes from the gap between "people who can see through the hype and are assessing utility in a post-hype environment" and "people who know how dangerous the hype is precisely because being able to see through it is actually pretty rare in humans"

the thing about our current moment is that yes, the anti-AI and anti-big tech people are getting very reactive nowadays - but have you seen what they’re *reacting* to?

One reason I'm starting to recommend the Original to people: it is an extremely rare example of something you can buy today that truly is "made like they used to be"

Other than technical revisions to the motor, like different stator/rotor designs, it is made just like century-old fans were!

They do, but I'm stressing the importance of making sure you know it is a proper ceiling fan box which was correctly installed and not something that looks "good enough"

Not many ceiling fans come with lag bolts but the Original does b/c it weighs so much and they don't want people taking chances

Want to add:

I have just purchased one. These are excellent fans which outperform most options on the market by a large margin when it comes to airflow and they will probably outlive me.

The bearing is oiled! As in it comes with a bottle of oil like it's 1893!

The fan hangs from a hook and bushing you install in a ceiling box, and the decorative canopy attaches directly to the downrod; if the fan rocks it moves as one piece. And it comes with a balance kit.

Note they are extremely heavy and require a dedicated fan box or attachment directly to structure

I can't believe I know the answer to this but...

If you are willing to spend ridiculous money for an objectively kind of ugly fan, The Hunter Original is a 100+ year old cast iron design which checks those boxes

www.hunterfan.com/products/cei...

Congrats on 30 years of steamed hams, @thatbilloakley.bsky.social 🍔♨️

So like, every hour they acknowledge "our audience is actually quite large and we broadcast to the entire metro area" but then they pay next to no attention to what's going on in the suburbs and have a definite air of "they don't matter" which they can't seem to suppress.

The gatekeeping is tiring.

Oh no, what I'm talking about is the local news broadcasts.

This is a thorn in my side because Chicagoans have next to no self-awareness of what they sound like. It's particularly egregious coming from WBEZ which does station IDs on the hour for their repeaters in Morris, Kankakee, and Joliet.

I would say it's a mostly local term but it's a pretty self-explanatory term unlike, say, DFW's Metroplex

Yeah, we do that, but that's what Chicagoland means to us

I am happy to say Chicagoland because it's a cool word and it encompasses the whole metro area - a population which vastly outnumbers the city itself.

But even though the only reason I'd say "I'm from Chicago" is b/c nobody knows our suburbs, if city folks hear me say that they'll have a hissy fit.

That's what I would say!

But that's the whole thing: only Chicagoans care about this. If I tell someone where I'm from, which happens to be almost exactly as close to the Loop as Dolton, they'll scoff and say "well that's not /really/ Chicago" but now all of the sudden Dolton is.

Interesting.

I will always and forever ask any Chicagoan "where's the Pope from again?" because the hypocrisy must be exposed

[this is actually a post about Chicago]

*my* thing about the Pope which drives me batty is when WBEZ keeps referring to him as the "Chicago-born pontiff" or what have you - while at the same time never ever forgetting to say "suburban [place]" whenever something's happening outside the city limits.

so which is it you gatekeepy fucks

And that is why I always silence my phone whenever I'm taking a flight