EvaMC

a) It’s a misdemeanor.
b) The US naturalization process is broken. (It took a friend with a valid green card 4 years to get naturalized and required legal intervention after her application was lost.)
c) Other countries have alternative options like guest worker permits for seasonal workers.

“Everybody needs to get off their asses and WORK!!!” “Not like that!”

A conman was written up in the local newspaper after his arrest. The article left him in high dudgeon. Not the part about being arrested for theft, fraud and forgery; nope, what he took offense to was being called a functionary in the local political party. “How dare they call me a functionary!”

It’s like when the bank robber was asked why he robs banks and he answers “because that’s where the money is.” Universities with their endowments are banks to be robbed at the point of a DEI. Look for wherever a pile of money is sitting around; it’s a target to be looted.

california’s population is larger than at least a dozen red states *combined* so if we’re playing the “we deserve more representation” game give us our 500 senators

It’s like a row of houses. One has a lock (copyright) and the next three don’t. AI companies don’t live in or pay rent in any of them, didn’t build or furnish them and have no claim on them. They’re not allowed to stroll in and steal people’s stuff in any of them. Or sell us back what they stole.

Copyrighted works are only the tip of the iceberg as regards theft. These companies scraped the web for non-copyrighted content created and contracted/paid for by others. While we debate who owns the rights to a translation, AI companies already stole it.

It’s probably best not to conflate policymaking and myth-making, but here we are

Eine junge Amsel im Gras

von der Straße gesammelt aber generell: Ästlinge sind junge Vögel, die das Nest verlassen, bevor sie richtig fliegen können. Sie wirken hilflos, werden aber weiter von den Eltern versorgt. Bitte nicht mitnehmen – nur sichern, wenn akute Gefahr besteht GaliGrü eure Service-Jane

I had a landlady once whose brother owned a painting company and padded all his invoices so much they ended up being triple what they should’ve been. Don’t know why that memory suddenly popped up…

Very-sigh

Lots of freelance work is not copyrighted. That doesn’t mean it’s open season on someone’s work product. It means technology has outstripped our laws and ability or will to regulate it.

It’s not only a matter of compensation either: a) I don’t want to be paid for splinters of my work after it’s been fed through an LLM pulverizer, b) I never consented to this use of my work, and c) I never contracted with any third parties, other than whoever hired me and paid me in the first place.

As a freelancer, I contracted with a company or individual to deliver content for them. Many chose to post it on the web, where it could be scraped to feed LLMs and train AI. But… I and other content creators never agreed to this use of our work (with the aim to put us out of business).

As AI changes how movies are made, Hollywood crews ask: What’s left for us? AI is supplying powerful new tools at a fraction of the cost, forcing below-the-line artists to wonder if the future of filmmaking has a place for them.

“AI scrapes everything we artists have made off the internet and creates a completely static, banal world that can never imagine anything that hasn’t happened before,” documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis warned… (quoted from www.latimes.com/entertainmen...)

LOL—like someone in my screenwriting class telling me that to secure a European apartment she likes, my main character “should pull out her checkbook, wave it around, and offer the agent showing the apartment $10,000 on the spot”.

I got Covid in Europe. They had a doctor from the public health service call me every day and delivered Paxlovid to my door—free of charge—in the interest of public health.

I’m a LuddAIte

Tourism down, incarceration up is quite the trajectory

When anti-vaxxers come at me with the mRNA altering their precious DNA, I ask them if they know what a virus does once it enters their cells

If you think a golden ballroom is more important than childhood cancer research… I have nothing left to say to you. Please unfollow me.

#pediatriccancer #cancermom

Grievance grandpa 😂😂😂

With fake liens, antigovernment agitators aim to damage political opponents' credit, careers Financing statements — meant to record legitimate business liens — are now a vehicle for conspiracy-laced claims, trillion-dollar demands and vendettas against politicians, businesses and public emplo...

Claiming to be on a mission from God, cretins are filing baseless liens on the property of elected officials they dislike, the LA Times reveals.
I wrote about similar tactics 25 years ago in the NYTimes, but few & scattered cases.
This appears to be organized abuse.
www.latimes.com/california/s...

Monthly Employment Situation Report: Quick Guide to Methods and Measurement Issues Monthly Employment Situation Report: Quick Guide to Methods and Measurement Issues

It takes exactly five minutes to search for and read about the methodology, including the revision process, used to generate these statistics but I guarantee the majority of republicans will take hassett’s bullshit at face value

www.bls.gov/bls/empsitqu...

Emblems of mediocrYT

I was surprised the Bidens didn’t restore the Rose Garden, but I guess it would have been for naught anyway, since Trump would’ve ripped it up a second time

And here I was thinking the way to solve hunger was food.

Guy who fell off a building, as he passes the 17th floor—so far, so good!

Beautiful boï