Nikolas Badminton

YouTubers Are Selling Their Unused Video Footage to AI Companies YouTubers and other digital content creators are selling their unused video footage to artificial intelligence companies seeking exclusive videos to better train their AI algorithms, oftentimes nettin...

OpenAI, Google, AI media company Moonvalley and several other AI companies are collectively paying hundreds of content creators for access to their unpublished videos

In this second episode of AstroNots, Rex arrives to deliver supplies only to be greeted with a few surprises.

youtube.com/watch?v=q5iq...

#cartoon #cancon #Creator

America’s Parable: Octavia Butler Tried to Warn Us Economic instability, climate change, and White Christian fascism made a maelstrom

Octavia tried to warn us…
zora.medium.com/americas-par...

Welcome to the public domain, THE SKELETON DANCE (1929). 🎞️ 🎶👻 Walt Disney Studios' first Silly Symphony cartoon is a wordless masterpiece of synchronized animation & music featuring dancing skeletons in a graveyard.

➡️ https://blog.archive.org/2025/01/01/welcome-to-the-public-domain-in-2025⁠

7. Gen AI slips into the ‘it’s fine and all’ category of tech. Truth be told, it’s going to find its killer app in monetized search and owned platform integration e.g. natural language queries and useful actions in Gmail etc.

6. AGI DAOs and AGI claims (this is seriously going to test my patience). Someone will claim AGI - but, only because they’ve created a new definition - this will be laughed at by many and a misstep.

5. Crypto resurgence, and more serious CBDC experiments

4. Russian destabilization and ‘ally’ cannibalism.

3. Big tech more deeply ‘advising’ government and strip mining budgets in the name of efficiency. Like a technocratic ringworm.

2. The stumbling of automation at-scale - watch the dearth of humanoid robots stumbling at CES.

1. Ignorance of good design and finding limits more quickly across multiple industries (especially big tech)

Now that we’ve finally landed in 2025 on the morning of January 1st, it’s time to call out 7 things we should be watching out for in terms of hype and distraction - see comments for each

What would you add?

The priest doesn't have time for your shit.

‘It will exist for ever’: Bluey fans fearful and excited for cartoon’s future Hugely popular show to get Disney feature film treatment but creator Joe Brumm will stop writing TV series Bluey fan sites can be quite odd places. In normal times, adult enthusiasts of the wildly successful children’s cartoon post pictures of prime…

‘It will exist for ever’: Bluey fans fearful and excited for cartoon’s future

Getting back into playing chess. Style? Aggressive and sneaky.

Esports are booming in Africa – but can its infrastructure keep pace? Esports teams, leagues and competitions are flourishing, but poor connectivity and rarity of Africa-based servers are hampering expansion On a recent Sunday afternoon in an upmarket neighbourhood of Nairobi, Daniel Badu was rapidly pressing the screen of…

Esports are booming in Africa – but can its infrastructure keep pace?

Measles killed 800,000 kids (worldwide) in 1980. It killed around 50,000 in 2022

Banks dial back public climate targets as Trump prepares for office Are banks’ climate shifts a retreat or a response to new political realities?

"Banks dial back public climate targets as Trump prepares for office" by Anita Hawser for @thebanker.bsky.social: www.thebanker.com/Banks-dial-b...

Every AI Copyright Lawsuit in the US, Visualized WIRED is following every copyright battle involving the AI industry—and we’ve created some handy visualizations that will be updated as the cases progress.

NEW: WIRED is following every copyright battle involving the AI industry—and we’ve created some handy visualizations that will be updated as the cases progress.

the feds: stop trying to turn this guy into some cool antihero with a badass public image

also the feds: *treat him like they’ve captured the joker*

The Cistercian numerals, developed by the Cistercian monastic order in the early 13th century, are a largely forgotten number system. They offer a more compact notation compared to Arabic or Roman numerals, allowing any integer from 1 to 9999 to be represented with a single character.

Energy firms to spend £70bn to rewire Great Britain’s electricity grid National Grid, SSE and ScottishPower submit plans amid global race to shift from fossil fuels to clean electricity Energy companies have promised to spend almost £70bn over five years to help rewire Great Britain’s electricity infrastructure in the…

Energy firms to spend £70bn to rewire Great Britain’s electricity grid

Headline: Do men know what an actual woman looks like? Candid, paparazzi photos of actor Sydney Sweeney in a purple bikini Text: After candid photos of Sydney Sweeney in a bikini leaked online, thousands of men on X have been having a full on mental breakdown because she doesn't look exactly the same as when she's glammed up for an award show or airbrushed in a magazine. They've been tearing her apart for her body, her face, and basically calling her an ugly hag and a catfish.

The entire "controversy" reminds me of the famous quote from philosopher Marilyn Frye, who wrote in her book, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory, "To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e., women). All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire... those are, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex. Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving."

Constantly thinking of this Marilyn Frye quote

From @taylorlorenz.bsky.social’s newsletter www.usermag.co/p/tiktok-is-...

The ‘quad-demic’ is here – and with it I have become a disease detective | Zoe Williams Anytime anyone tells me they are ill, I now launch endless inquisitions about their symptoms. Why do I care so much? Neologisms may have the excitement of the strange, but there is nothing exciting about the “quad-demic” if you’re afflicted by it. Even…

The ‘quad-demic’ is here – and with it I have become a disease detective | Zoe Williams

Pope says he was almost assassinated in 2021 but British intelligence foiled plot Excerpts from Francis’s autobiography say British intelligence and Iraqi police foiled two suicide bomb plots Pope Francis has said he escaped a double suicide bombing during a visit to Iraq three years ago after the attempts on his life were foiled by…

Pope says he was almost assassinated in 2021 but British intelligence foiled plot

The torture of Youtube delivering multiple ads to those that use Ad Blockers because they've broken them hurts my soul

Australia’s warmest spring on record, with an anomaly of +2.08C. More at www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/clim... Almost every place was unusually warm.

"Plastics are not convenient, they are a weapon of mass destruction. If we don’t get an ambitious treaty of Busan it will be a betrayal...history will not forgive us" Juan Carlos Monterrey of 🇵🇦 on the final day of #PlasticsTreaty talks.

At this point it’s been said in a hundred different ways, so I think people are being intentional about not getting it.

Midwest builders are using wood in a new way to construct high rises. And it's climate-friendly A wood building material can be used in high-rise structures, giving it the potential to replace materials that are bad for the climate, while also locking carbon into buildings for decades.

It’s estimated this building will offset 7,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s the amount of emissions produced to heat and cool about 1,100 homes in Milwaukee for a year. Environmental benefits like those are sparking a growing interest in mass timber.

www.tspr.org/2024-12-02/m...