@aram@aoir.social
@aram@aoir.social avatar

aram

@aram@aoir.social

Writer, professor, musician.

The lesser ½ of Dunia & Aram.
The lesser ½ of https://zirk.us/@RASinn.
The lesser ⅛ of Comm Studies @ AU.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

aram, to ChatGPT
@aram@aoir.social avatar

Before you install the new #ChatGPT app on iOS, ask yourself: what's the worst thing the maker of the world's greatest bullshit machine could do with this kind of information, and why are they requesting it?

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

I published empirical research back in the year 2000 showing that if you give consumers a safe, easy way to access a giant library of content without ads, they'll happily pay a fair market price.

The streaming successes of 2013-2020 proved this to be true.

Now, siloization, surveillance, advertising, price-gouging, and shitty algorithms are going to send everyone back to "piracy."

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/26/24015595/amazon-prime-video-ads-coming-january-29

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

I've had a number of non-Jewish friends reach out to me over the past week to see if I'm okay.

No, I'm not okay. But neither is anyone.

Tribes are bullshit. Race is bullshit. Religion is bullshit if you kill in the name of God. Murder is murder. Cruelty is cruelty. Injustice is injustice. Dead children are dead children.

The planet is being devoured by the insatiable greed of a handful of people and the rest of us are fighting over scraps. It only gets worse from here unless we learn to love.

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

The US government assassinated or imprisoned every leader of the Black Panther party for [checks notes] giving out free breakfasts but these wannabe Nazi terrorists actively prepare for American genocide in plain sight, with no consequences. https://wgme.com/news/local/neo-nazi-leader-establishes-training-site-in-maine-former-us-marine-christopher-pohlhaus-springfield-white-supremacists-camp-moores-road-bluttstamm-blood-tribe-physical-fitness-drills-weapons-training

aram, to academia
@aram@aoir.social avatar

I hate that I have to send emails like this. But that's what it's come to, isn't it.

#academia #academicchatter @academicchatter

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

The buck stops here. In my backyard.

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

Big, wonky win for #FairUse in US #copyright:

https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/5A2E1191A4B2D49785258A28004F2532/$file/22-7063-2016393.pdf

TLDR: If a tech standard becomes part of a legal standard, you can share it freely online without fear of liability for infringement.

“Many private organizations develop and copyright suggested technical standards ... We hold that the non-commercial dissemination of such standards, as incorporated by reference into law, constitutes fair use and thus cannot support liability for copyright infringement.

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

Best obituary headline ever.

Nicely done, @noahshachtman @RollingStone

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

Karl Popper really nailed it in 1945:

"[I]f we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

aram, to Israel
@aram@aoir.social avatar

The people of have been on the streets for over a year, double digit percentages of the population, week after week, demanding Netanyahu's resignation and raging against his policy, but you wouldn't know it by looking at US media. All we get to see is how the war is bad for Biden.

Screenshot of a Washington Post article headline reading: "MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT - Six months into Gaza war, Biden confronts the limits of U.S. leverage," by Karen DeYoung.

aram,
@aram@aoir.social avatar

And they're still out there today, facing increased police violence and worse, including murderous nut jobs ramming cars into the peaceful protesters, just to voice their opposition to that monster.

https://m.ai6yr.org/@exador23/112227666904104818

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

Here we go: FTC files a massive lawsuit against Amazon. The charges will sound very familiar to anyone who's read Rebecca Giblin & @pluralistic's Chokepoint Capitalism. https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/26/23809817/amazon-ftc-antitrust-lawsuit-monopoly

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

This is a microcosm of the entirety of human history.

aram, to ai
@aram@aoir.social avatar

Thank god for @mmasnick because I really really really didn't want to have to write an article about why is an awful way to address the harms of to creative workers and now he's done it and I can just point people to his article for the next two annoying years. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/07/19/stop-rushing-to-copyright-as-a-tool-to-solve-the-problems-of-ai/

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

Who could be sending me these unsolicited job recruiting emails for positions that I have neither the credentials nor the interest to pursue?

[reads the recruiter's bio]

Ohhhhhh.

Oh. No.

No.

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

Unlike most 60s-era icons who talked a good game about peace love & understanding and then became massive greedheads, my man keeps it real. First Spotify, now X. Keep on rockin' in the free world, Neil.

https://jambands.com/news/2023/11/20/neil-young-leaves-x-following-musks-antisemitic-sentiments/

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

O RLY

Secret Russian document, 2023:

"escalate the situation in the Middle East around Israel, Iran and Syria to distract the U.S. with the problems of this region."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/17/russia-foreign-policy-us-weaken/

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

This seems like it might be important. https://fortune.com/well/2024/01/12/covid-jn1-pandemic-world-health-organization-warns-dangers-repeat-covid-infection-cardiac-pulmonary-neurologic/

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

I was in lower Manhattan 22 years ago this morning. My subway passed under the towers between the first and second strikes & I watched them burn from the roof of my office building in Greenwich Village before fleeing the toxic smoke for Long Island.

As tragic as the attacks were, the far larger tragedy is how they spurred a deadly auto-immune response in my country, unleashing wave after wave of self-hatred, self-fear, & self-harm, leading to M*GA. I hope we recover in my children's lifetimes.

aram, to diy
@aram@aoir.social avatar

Fellow independent musicians: If we're ever going to break this cycle of platform dependency, betrayal, and disappointment, we'll have to build and run the MP3.com/MySpace/SoundCloud/BandCamp replacement ourselves. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/epic-games-cuts-almost-half-of-bandcamp-pre-songtradr-sale

aram, to privacy
@aram@aoir.social avatar

New article from me & @jesse in @RollingStone:

We Spied on Trump’s ‘Southern White House’ From Our Couches

(a preview of our forthcoming @themitpress book THE SECRET LIFE OF DATA)

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/data-brokers-trump-tech-spying-privacy-threat-1234897098/

@bookstodon @commodon @jkehoe

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

Happy friends. Here's a recording of me interviewing 25 years ago. We talk about the internet, video games, and the arbitrary nature of the Gregorian calendar. https://archive.org/details/ASDA042198

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

We're over 12 million users on Mastodon. I've been researching the Internet since the '90s and I can't remember the last time I saw a slow-and-steady growth curve like this.
https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/110434871556934527

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

Apple is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/hackers-can-extract-secret-encryption-keys-from-apples-mac-chips/

aram, to random
@aram@aoir.social avatar

The scary thing isn't that Supreme Court justices have anti-democratic political agendas.

The scary thing is that they no longer feel the need to hide it.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • tacticalgear
  • magazineikmin
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • mdbf
  • rosin
  • slotface
  • InstantRegret
  • khanakhh
  • Durango
  • kavyap
  • osvaldo12
  • DreamBathrooms
  • JUstTest
  • GTA5RPClips
  • ngwrru68w68
  • everett
  • tester
  • ethstaker
  • cisconetworking
  • cubers
  • modclub
  • provamag3
  • anitta
  • normalnudes
  • Leos
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •