onfocus

Rage suffers abuse and then decides, not that abuse should end, but that the existence of somebody else, who is also already suffering from similar abuse, represents an unacceptable existential threat, one that deserves violence.

A.R. Moxon is making a case here for a distinction between useful anger vs. destructive rage.

From billions of mysterious Tethers to the apparent identity theft of Thai sex workers, many questions remain about what happened at Bankman-Fried's crypto empire.

WTF was going on at FTX? Molly White's coverage of the FTX trial was fantastic and her list of topics that almost came up makes it seem like the trial was just the tip of a very weird iceberg.

That being said: She’s a billionaire, her tour is taking over the world, she’s transforming the music industry in real time, and very few living celebrities have her scale of cultural influence. With all the love in the world, shouldn’t someone be, at least, attempting to look without fear or favor to see if she’s truly keeping her side of the street clean?

The kinds of stories that could shed light on the music industry if they looked with a critical eye.

Breaking news from Spotify: starting in 2024 (less than two months from now), they will no longer pay any royalty on tracks that fall below a minimum 1,000 streams a year. These tracks will still earn royalties, in theory – but those royalties will not be paid to their rights holders. Instead, they will go into a pot to be divided among accounts that garner more plays.

Happy holidays from Spotify, artists!

Update (12/4): Happy holidays from Spotify, employees

This overview of the historic origins of these Artificial General Intelligence boom or doom cults by Timnit Gebru should be required viewing. We have a real world with existing needs that these ideologies ignore. The result of these scifi inspired beliefs is promoting authoritarian politics. As mentioned in this video, the main question to ask: who benefits now?

See also: The Wide Angle: Understanding TESCREAL — the Weird Ideologies Behind Silicon Valley’s Rightward Turn.

UnitedHealthcare, the largest health insurance company in the US, is allegedly using a deeply flawed AI algorithm to override doctors' judgments and wrongfully deny critical health coverage to elderly patients. This has resulted in patients being kicked out of rehabilitation programs and care facilities far too early, forcing them to drain their life savings to obtain needed care that should be covered under their government-funded Medicare Advantage Plan.

A current "benefit" of AI: providing cover for inhumane policies. Policy creators can blame the algorithm.

It could have been a lot better. Trump didn’t just “raise eyebrows” with his vermin line; Welker should have said it was redolent of Nazism. Welker let it drop instead of following up. It also shouldn’t have been a yes/no question, but rather something like “how do you feel when he says something like this”?

Small signs the media is evolving on Trump coverage.

The code, which does not include any enforcement mechanism, comes after ProPublica and other outlets disclosed that justices had repeatedly failed to disclose gifts and travel from wealthy donors.

LOL, just a perfect non-binding 'code' for a corrupt court. Like a petulant child, "There, we have a code of ethics. Happy?"

Google's default search deal with Apple is worth so much to the search giant that Google pays 36 percent of its search advertising revenue from Safari to keep its search engine set as the default in Apple's browser, Bloomberg reported.

Google pays a high price to be the default search option everywhere.

I can already hear the objections from the Times and its defenders: It’s not our job to make people care about things. Nonsense. Of course the news media plays a central role in determining what people think about. The choices they make about what topics to cover and how much to cover them send a clear signal to the American people about what is important; what is worth thinking about.

Based on the number of mentions, a single poll a year before an election is the most important thing to think about. The consequences of encouraging political violence, not as much.

Repetition is the most important element of communications, but you don’t hear President Biden hammering the theme of freedom, making it clear how close we are to the precipice of authoritarianism and spelling out what that will mean. As a result, many voters seem largely unaware that fundamental American freedoms are at stake.

Great article about why freedom is a much better message for democrats than the economy.

But yet the pundits have already pivoted from “Joe Biden is terrible and unpopular and should be ashamed of himself!” to “The Democrats just shockingly [not shockingly if you understand anything about America right now — Ed.] had yet another great election night, and for that Joe Biden should feel bad, because according to polls, which are the same as elections [No — Ed.], he is terrible and unpopular and should be ashamed of himself!”

Cathartic rant about media Trump thirst.

Given all of this, given Trump’s increasingly explicit rhetoric about shifting the chief executive position toward authoritarianism, it seems difficult to understand how he’s still running even with President Biden in early polling — or, in some cases leading him.

My guess on why: the US is a nation with a culture of violence and toxic masculinity and many people have abusive fathers as a model for how the world works. It’s hard to break free from the familiar systems we were raised with, but it’s important to try to create (and vote for) a better world.

Ohio voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to enshrine protections for reproductive health services, including abortion, in the state constitution — the latest in a post-Roe streak of ballot box wins for the abortion rights movement.

The finding out phase of letting the states decide. Turns out people want human rights like bodily autonomy.

Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.

This is what fascism looks like. This is your regular plea from me to never willingly vote for a fascist. Democracy can be a mess but it’s preferable to boots stomping human faces forever.

“I’m gonna say to NIH scientists, God bless you all,” Kennedy said. “Thank you for public service. We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.”

On the bright side, voters don’t have to speculate that a vote for this guy is a vote against using science to make informed decisions. It’s painfully clear. And this is your regular plea from me to please vote for people who want to minimize infectious disease.

“We have never seen this level of destruction from an infectious illness before. It rendered the placenta unfit to carry out its duties,” said Dr. David Schwartz, a perinatal pathologist in private practice in Atlanta, who led the study. “These fetuses and newborns died from asphyxiation due to lack of oxygen.”

Covid is still a horror show. I’m just learning about this particular horror now. We don’t hear about it.

I’ve done my best to explain what’s going on with these terms, but they cover basically every single major feature of git which is definitely too much for a single blog post so it’s pretty patchy in some places.

I really like this approach to understanding something with confusing terminology—assume the audience has necessary context and just jump in and unpack the confusing parts without starting from zero. I learned some new git tricks from this.

It is, of course, possible that Johnson really has no bank accounts and just keeps all his money in sacks of cash hidden under his mattress. Another explanation could be that he has selective amnesia and has forgotten to disclose his assets for seven years. But several ethics experts offered another reason: Johnson is terrible at managing the money he makes and may be in massive debt.

Ethics for thee but not for me. If you haven't heard, the new speaker has some strange stuff going on. Third in line for the presidency.