joanne mcneil

a fantastic book, and an actual example of a "mechanical turk"

Once again I’d like to recommend @jomc.bsky.social’s novel Wrong Way:

us.macmillan.com/books/978037...

Read @jomc.bsky.social’s novel “Wrong Way”:

www.mcdbooks.com/books/wrong-...

Waymo money, Waymo problems… nyra.nyc/articles/way...

An 8-bit video screen shows a group of donkeys running along a dirt road lined with trees.

For this week's @kcrw.com Art Insider, @jomc.bsky.social writes about a seven hour video game/performance about donkeys that fuses "rhythm game challenges to retro arcade shooters, suggesting a history of the Luddite movement as told by Donkey Kong."

Sold.
email.kcrw.com/asses-masses...

A video of Alex Pretti reading out the final salute of an unnamed veteran he cared for until the end of his life in the ICU, posted to Facebook by his son.

Screenshot of Grokipedia text, “ Residence and Lifestyle McNeil, who grew up in the working-class city of Brockton, Massachusetts, later sublet an apartment in West Harlem, New York, as of 2020, reflecting a flexible, nomadic phase suited to freelance writing.[5] She has since relocated to Los Angeles, where she maintains her base as of 2024, enabling a remote lifestyle that aligns with the demands of independent journalism and book projects.[1] This shift from East Coast roots to the West Coast mirrors patterns of displacement common in precarious creative professions, informed by her Brockton upbringing in a community of modest means.[4] Her habits emphasize frugality and self-reliance, habits traceable to early experiences with limited resources, such as family use of dial-up internet in the 1990s, which fostered a cautious approach to technology and consumption persisting into her adult life in Los Angeles. Recent activities, including a 2023 interview with the Los Angeles Public Library, confirm her ongoing presence in the city, where she balances writing with minimal public disclosure of personal routines.[43] This low-profile lifestyle prioritizes productivity over ostentation, avoiding the excesses associated with tech hubs while leveraging LA's networks for occasional engagements.”

surreal and infuriating to encounter my Grokipedia bio. Feels like a personal brand was forced upon me by generative AI, eg “low profile” as lifestyle trend rather than an inclination

hi! he was going to Tulum on vacation and rented his room out on Airbnb. I didn’t realize that’s the word for partying in Bosnian/etc! thanks for reading so closely!! love this kind of question xx

My mistake. Deleting

PG&E is having a massive outage in San Francisco. Waymo robots aren't handling the traffic light outages well. Cell service is also out is some places.

No surprise as Waymo robots & cell have repeatedly failed during power outages.

CPUC regulates both Waymo and PG&E (Profit Greed & Explosions).

Everyone treats "autonomy" as a singular technological problem, that once "solved" will simply create a profit-generating machine, but the hard reality is that this technology is a constant negotiation between profits on one hand and the level of safety and behavior society will tolerate on the road

Primary them all and block anybody who comes with the “at this crucial juncture the most important thing is that we win.” if they believed that they wouldn’t do this and with friends like them nobody needs enemies

"I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off." Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry Copywriters were one of the first to have their jobs targeted by AI firms. These are their stories, three years into the AI era.

When the AI boom began, copywriters were singled out as one of the jobs most vulnerable to AI. Now, three years later, I wanted to hear from workers on the frontlines of the industry, to hear what had actually taken place on the ground.

For many, it was even worse than they'd feared.

by now, there must be more stories about people who fell in love with chatbots than actual people who fell in love with chatbots

and no, you won't going to get away with a New Directions book in translation or NYRB reissue (both of which sold 10k copies already) on your best of list as a wildcard anymore

if you are among the few staff critics reviewing books, films, music, art, &c, it is your professional duty to take a chance on things. Attend a random screening, pick up a self-published book, follow whims and offer full-throated generous praise for anything that makes an impression on a shoestring

they did get 6 figure salaries for working part time. presumably their oversight didn't extend to the deplorable conditions of content moderators

And the people who should have been criticizing its formation were instead scheming how to get on that board. where are all those "data ethicists" now?

thinking back to when Facebook launched its Oversight Board in 2020—a transparent move to defuse crises on its own terms, a fig leaf to evade external audits and appeal to the technocrats.

"Self-regulating" trillion dollar company is now a model for AI firms to playact as their worst critics.

Silicon Valley Doesn’t Know What Makes a Good City On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us: Joanne McNeil unpacks Big Tech’s driverless transport fantasy.

I was on @techwontsave.us talking about the human labor Waymo depends on and disavows. And how the charade launders accountability for its mistakes, scapegoating everyone and everything but the machine.
www.thenation.com/podcast/arch...

jaywalking pedestrians, your destiny awaits

reddit comment on article about waymo hitting a dog " hsgual • 2d ago I mean.. why was the dog around in the street or off leash? Like, I get it, Waymo could likely do something to not have this happen… but we also need people to be responsible with their animals. 63 u/braveNewWorldView avatar braveNewWorldView OP • 2d ago Yes, but this was a toddler sized dog. Neither should be in the street. A distracted driver might do the same but average driver would have slammed on the breaks.. -19 u/sanfrangusto avatar sanfrangusto • 2d ago Toddler sized? Is kinda a big dog. Elsewhere you say kinda small. Like a german sheppard? Or chihuahua? 14 Educational_Put_2276 • 17h ago Did you Waymo slam the brakes at all or just go right over it? And it didn’t stop after the collision? If it never slammed brakes or stopped, that’s pretty disturbing! 2 PersonalAd5382 • 1d ago"

going get wild when Waymo transitions out of the "good to users" stage of the enshittification cycle
www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comm...

not to put too fine a point on it but every one of these people—lizza and nuzzi, obviously, but also sundberg herself—are symptoms of the same problem, which is that larping as a journalist is orders of magnitude more lucrative than actually practicing journalism

It’s blowing my mind that schools, universities, public services would run headlong into this. We spent 15 years documenting black boxes. This is a black box in a black hole!

This Saturday!! Only a few tickets left www.eventbrite.com/e/what-comes...

Silicon Valley Doesn’t Know What Makes a Good City w/ Joanne McNeil — Tech Won't Save Us Paris Marx is joined by Joanne McNeil to discuss the proliferation of delivery bots and robotaxis and how they recycle disproven claims about how technology will improve transportation. Joanne McNeil ...

now listening to this @techwontsave.us episode with @jomc.bsky.social about autonomous vehicles and delivery robots, particularly relevant following the recent tragedy of a waymo taxi killing a locally beloved bodega cat

“With machines (however remotely assisted) where essential workers used to be, those who WFH are ever more shielded from strangers beneath their tax bracket.”

@jomc.bsky.social isn’t cuckoo for Coco bots in LARA no. 2.

nyra.nyc/articles/way...

Silicon Valley Doesn’t Know What Makes a Good City w/ Joanne McNeil - Tech Won’t Save Us

@jomc.bsky.social was just on “Tech Won't Save Us” and part of the discussion was about the behavior of delivery robots like this techwontsave.us/episode/299_...

This Saturday!! Only a few tickets left www.eventbrite.com/e/what-comes...

One of the take away listening to this is how once again we don't think of people with disabilities, delivery robots tearing down the middle of the sidewalk #disablityawareness #robots
#ai