Matt

I hope everybody is noticing that public and private universities all over the country are dismantling religious studies programs as white christian nationalists are ascendant in all levels of our government

i tried a cologne and am spending the day flat on my back for allergy reasons. it’s also tormenting my partner. aough. every air purifier in the house running is not enough

as a text-based creature in an increasingly video-first world I'd like to be cherished as a sort of charismatic but doomed animal, to be fed treats in my enclosure until I meet my inevitable demise, after which my taxidermied corpse might greet visitors in a lobby somewhere

There is an AI company called GeoSpy, the AI is designed to look at a photo (any photo) and tell the user where that photo was taken. They initially opened it to the public, but privacy concerns led to them going private. And now they sell to the folllowing: law enforcement, government and insurance. I know we’ve been saying “don’t fucking take pics at protests” for years? But I think we need to escalate that to “don’t take pics at pride. Don’t take pics at queer events” etc

IMPORTANT!! 🚨

Surveillance state update —

From a friend with informed intel. No more crowd photos of any kind, friends. I’m sorry.

"May his name be erased."

If I could do one thing on a curriculum basis to American high education, it would be to ban undergraduate business majors. It wouldn’t fix everything. But it would fix a lot.

up at 2:30am to eat my silly little dinner and take my silly little meds. doing groovy.

Say it with us—a library loan is not a lost sale! 📚

Look see he’s doing the thing he threatened he would do what are we doing here bluesky

Private company buys a public good. A few years go by and the company decides the public good is no longer worthwhile; the public suffers as a result.

This story arc is way too common in modern society.
deadline.com/2024/12/max-...

On the call with staff Friday, Litwin apologized for the lack of communication. “We recognize the flow of communication has not been how we typically handle sensitive matters like this,” Litwin said. Detailing corporate employees’ benefits and severance, Party City’s Chief Human Resources Officer Karen McGowan broke down in tears several times on the short video conference call. “I certainly know this is a lot to take in,” McGowan said before she paused and teared up. “My apologies.”

it's weird that people are homicidally angry at corporate America when a CEO hired four months ago fires the entire workforce of a 40-year-old company five days before Christmas with no severance and no benefits www.cnn.com/2024/12/20/b...

Whenever you see one of these stories you learn: it was acquired by private equity, it took on debt to pay the new owners dividends, it raised prices to pay off the debt. Every time.

Luigi Mangione Judge Married to Former Healthcare Executive Judge overseeing case involving murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson owns millions in stock, including Pharma and healthcare, through husband

The judge presiding over the Luigi Mangione case is married to a former Pfizer executive. More about the judge here:

Elon Musk takes aim at Wikipedia The billionaire has become one of the most prominent supporters of President-elect Donald Trump.

If you've never donated to Wikipedia, now's the time. Elon Musk is attacking it because it's one of the only sources of honest, curated information that he can't control.
www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-ta...

That's fucking depressing...

K-Klipp getting right back on it

Multiple companies are discontinuing their blu ray and 4K players.

In addition to the obvious, devastating implications for film preservation, it illustrates once again that the ultra-rich will not be happy until everything in our lives is subscription-based. A landlord for every need.

welp, after nearly 5 years, we got covid for christmas. does anyone have any advice on how to weather the plague?

I made a gingerbread panopticon

Taking poison damage by being alive

Years ago when the Tea Party shut down all govt funding, a friend's cancer treatment was halted as it was Medicaid & govt funded. She had 1 treatment to go. She had to REAPPLY FOR AID. Took months, during which cancer returned & got in her bones. Paul fucking Ryan killed her.

Walmart employees are now wearing body cameras in some stores Walmart store associates are now using body cameras in some locations as retailers look to deter theft and make employees safer.

The story that more cameras equal more safety is one of the most persistent evidence-free lies about technology in existence.

Tapping the sign and reminding folks that the strict binary between "safe cozy books" and "risky transgressive books" is fake. A few writers and readers on extreme ends of that spectrum made it up. In reality there are many varied works with many tones/content types and there will continue to be.

Bluesky, September 2024: "Horny for Gramsci. I will die for his hair" [110 reposts, 36 quotes, 236 likes]
Bluesky, December 2024: "Some guy in my Popular With Friends tab says he doesn't give a shit whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. I can be silent no more"

this interview is full of bangers

The latest "AI" (plagiarism-fraud-ecocide machine) crime against culture & human flourishing: fake resources on Indigenous languages.

Anishinabek Nation’s Anishinaabemowin Coordinator McLeod-Shabogesic had this to say about it: 1/2
#Skyhistorians #VastEarlyAmerica #IndigenousStudies

UCLA's AI-loving comp lit prof now says of her AI use, "I feel more empowered by this process. I am more of a teacher than I’ve ever been” and that her use of AI--which will include having it literally come up with the fucking assignments-- is “highly pedagogical and highly responsible.”

Every time I’ve spoken to a gallery guard at an art museum, I’ve found that they hold a deep sense of reverence and responsibility for the collections under their watch. This has been repeatedly reflected in both journalism covering the people with these jobs and their own accounts. They stand there, day after day, dealing with entitled tourists, escaped toddlers, food smugglers, hyped-up school groups, and some of the more annoying varieties of possible human behaviors, and they don’t seem to lose a sense of the importance of their work. Even when the institutions they work for don’t pay them enough, this sense of reverence is retained. Every single day they are doing their best to protect that which is in their care. They feel a sense of duty during their time in those rooms. I have struggled to find that similar sense of duty and reverence when interviewing big tech employees working on storage products, but there is no reason it could not exist.

lil.law.harvard.edu/century-scal...

"Prompt Engineers" swear they are doing something b/c they had A Thought. But you fools. You bores. You absolute fucking turnips.

The Art isn't the Thought, the Idea. The Art is The Work.

And this isn't some art hoe bullshit, this is about craft.