onfocus

We briefly lived in an era in which the photograph was a shortcut to reality, to knowing things, to having a smoking gun. It was an extraordinarily useful tool for navigating the world around us. We are now leaping headfirst into a future in which reality is simply less knowable. The lost Library of Alexandria could have fit onto the microSD card in my Nintendo Switch, and yet the cutting edge of technology is a handheld telephone that spews lies as a fun little bonus feature.

Oh no. These examples are impossible to ID as AI.

Here are some more examples by Chris Welch at Threads.

Jeff Jarvis, a journalist and professor at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism, reacted to that column with scorn, tweeting, “What ‘press’? The broken and vindictive [New York] Times? The newly Murdochian [New York] Post? Hedge-fund newspaper husks? Rudderless CNN or NPR? Murdoch's fascist media? No. [Harris] can choose many ways to communicate her stands with others outside the old press and with the public directly. The old press can and should be bypassed.”

Amen. They treated Biden like garbage and give endless respect, admiration, and smoothing-over to Trump who calls for acts of violence against them. It makes no sense.

But the analysis discovered one major change: The incomes of the rich grew much faster in countries where tax rates were lowered. Instead of trickling down to the middle class, tax cuts for the rich may not accomplish much more than help the rich keep more of their riches and exacerbate income inequality, the research indicates.

Huge if true.

I'm joking. Wealth inequality makes this so obviously true it doesn't need to be said.

Instead of freeing up employment opportunities, findings from one study suggest that the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants could result in 968,000 fewer jobs available for US citizens, losses that would be compounded each year the policy remained in effect.

Almost as if the leading conservative intellectuals are just making things up they think their base wants to hear. After painting any moderating voices as the enemy, they have to take more and more extreme positions that don't match up with reality.

Data from the Michigan State Police, compiled by the Detroit News as Trump was preparing to visit the state, shows a similar drop in violent crime. Trump was arguing that violent crime was up in a state where violent crime is clearly down.

Lying about crime rates. His campaign is about convincing people they live in some sort of fantasy hellscape where everyone is out to get them.

The political party that’s been battered and bloodied in America’s culture wars since the end of the 1960s by not even really knowing how to fight them, finally decided to stop worrying about churning out policy papers and pleasing newspaper nitpickers and instead start playing to win — and on their terms.

And this is one traditional media outlet that isn't afraid to post a positive story about Democrats. Nice to see some small change happening in the media.

Microsoft attempted to remove the false entries but only succeeded temporarily. They reappeared after a few days, SWR reports. The company's terms of service disclaim liability for generated responses.

It's almost like they're trying to say "generated responses" aren't the product. Every company should just add "we’re not responsible for the products we sell” to their TOS to avoid all liability. Genius!

The initial elevation of Kennedy’s campaign on the right — including by Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon and House Republicans at a hearing last year — is now looking even more like a real potential blunder.

Finding out what happens when you run a 2nd Republican. Everyone looks like a "radical leftist" when you’re inside the Trump cult, but Kennedy isn’t even close to a centrist.

Update (8/23): Fin.

“If you’re not on board with helping implement a dramatic course correction because you’re afraid it’ll damage your future employment prospects, it’ll harm you socially — look, I get it,” Huff says. “That’s a real danger. It’s a real thing. But please: Do us all a favor and sit this one out.”

Good advice from Project 2025 training videos. If you don’t want to be ostracized from normal society, instead of secretly undermining the US government from within, sit this one out. Everyone else, please vote for people who care about other people so we don’t get all this garbage.

Being chill about menstruation is crucial if men want to be fathers of daughters, friends of women, or just people who wish to navigate the world comfortably, as it's heavily populated with people who get periods.

I guess we’re at a time in our culture when this has to be said out loud. Men are having trouble right now and Tim Walz seems like the kind of guy who can sit them down and gently explain things.

"We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war," Musk wrote today, a little over eight months after telling boycotting advertisers to "go fuck yourself."

You see, the web is a customer service medium.

It's true! This is anticompetitive. But the answer isn't to preserve the universal power of tech companies large and small to violate our human rights – it's to ban everyone, especially Google from spying on us!

Cory asks us to keep our eye on the real villain of the Google monopoly case: constant surveillance.