maxkennerly

maxkennerly, 6 months ago to random

luv 2 b the empirical science guy who follows the data objectively

maxkennerly, 6 months ago to random

Remarkable how much studio executives hate filmmaking. It's not just contempt for the craft and the many distinct jobs that must be done well to make a good movie—they hate the movies themselves! Test audiences loved this, but the executives' reflex was "tax write-off."

https://screenrant.com/coyote-vs-acme-movie-cancelled-warner-bros-change-sale/

maxkennerly, 6 months ago to random

Even Churchill thought "the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing." And regardless of whether it was a war crime, in retrospect it's indisputable that the harm to civilians was grossly disproportionate compared to the military value.

"When Britain bombed Dresden, 35,000 people lost their lives" --Defence Secretary Grant Shapps
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1723651580484846039

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

If you want something to warm your heart, the Central Bucks School District was the quintessential "billionaire pays to put fascists on school board who deny COVID exists, harass LGBTQ teachers and students, and ban books."

They just ate a mouthful of shit and lost control.

https://www.phillyburbs.com/story/news/politics/elections/local/2023/11/07/central-bucks-school-board-race-ushers-in-new-democrat-majority-dana-hunter-karen-smith-pa-2023/71488991007/

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

Hey Americans, feeling politically powerless? You have an election tomorrow. Fascists are targeting those boring state and local positions and using them for everything from abortion restrictions to book bans to criminalizing trans healthcare. It's up to you to stop them.

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

He's suspended, but it says a lot about the intellectual and moral caliber of Netanyahu's cabinet that a minister thought nuking Gaza was a possibility. https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-minister-amichai-eliyahu-suspend-benjamin-netanyahu-nuclear-bomb-gaza-hamas-war/

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

I'm no fan of Tom Friedman, but he's right about all of this, including the way the high civilian casualty count from Israeli's response is overshadowing Hamas's massacre, and the lack of any real plan from Netanyahu's admin for what happens after a ground invasion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasefire.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6kw.qY5h.cyy-69Bl6vhq&smid=url-share

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

Donald Trump just loves Hamas supporters like Erdogan.

NYTimes news alert, "President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is addressing a sea of pro-Palestinian protesters in Istanbul with a scarf bearing the Palestinian and Turkish flags draped around his shoulders. He said in a televised address this week that “Hamas is not a terror organization,” calling it “an organization of liberation.”"

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

I totally want to move my financial life over to the website that promotes Nazis and where every single post of mine gets instant auto-spam replies. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23934216/x-twitter-bank-elon-musk-2024

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

A big problem right now is how Netanyahu can't be PM without the support of the right-wing, and so, because Bibi's future is more important to him than Israel's, every important post has to go to an incompetent, corrupt, delusional, right-wing crank. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-22/ty-article/.premium/netanyahus-hostage-envoy-endangers-the-lives-of-all-those-kidnapped-by-hamas/0000018b-538a-df6e-a5db-77eec70e0000

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

Kids' high school PTO is having a fundraiser tomorrow and the email says, "grab a bite to eat at one of our food truck vendors—Uncle L's BBQ, Jamaican D's, Angie's Viet Cuisine, and more" and I can't stress enough the benefits of raising your kids in a multicultural district.

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

SpaceX successfully buffaloed federal agencies to permit a launch which failed to use standard technology in place since before Apollo, resulting in giant chunks of concrete being thrown thousands of feet into wetlands.

Now the agencies are sort-of doing their jobs, so SpaceX is really mad and claiming there's a 'red tape' problem.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/10/18/spacex-battles-regulatory-process-that-could-hold-up-starship-test-flight-for-months/

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

An open secret of big pharma is that the bulk of their "innovation" is trivial—they're mostly generating analogues to evade patents—and the real breakthroughs are always mostly/entirely government initiated and funded, then handed to private companies for rent-seeking.

https://prospect.org/health/2023-10-18-nih-how-to-become-billionaire-program/

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

Just noting that "Stand With Israel" and "Free Palestine" have different meanings to different people and it is a good idea to figure out how someone interprets those phrases before getting mad at them for saying or not saying them.

design_law, 7 months ago to random

Greer, Burns & Crain, Ltd. (the firm that appears to have perfected, and perhaps invented, the #ScheduleA litigation model) has sued the operator of a certain website for allegedly impersonating people from the firm and "sen[ding] ... falsified Court documents" to Amazon "in an attempt to have Amazon lift an asset restraint for a defendant that had not been dismissed from N.D. Ill. Case No. 23-cv-3696."

(h/t @ericgoldman)

Complaint: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ilnd.446634/gov.uscourts.ilnd.446634.1.0.pdf

Docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67876120/greer-burns-crain-ltd-v-owner-and-operator-of-gbcslaw/

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

Happy to be corrected by an expert, but seems clear to me that every "AI detector" for text / image / video / audio is a complete scam and they should never be used in any context.

https://www.404media.co/ai-images-detectors-are-being-used-to-discredit-the-real-horrors-of-war/

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

Gosh, what a coincidence how a mercenary hacker decided to hack climate advocates just for fun and the fruits of that were used by Exxon Mobil to deter state AG investigations and influence judicial proceedings. Surely nothing here for the DOJ to investigate.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/mercenary-hackers-stole-data-that-exxon-later-cited-climate-lawsuits-us-2023-10-12/

maxkennerly, 7 months ago to random

It is strange and disturbing to see so many posts on social media that deny it's a war crime to stage a surprise attack on civilians (including murders, kidnappings, and rapes) or to starve out a civilian population (by cutting off electricity, food, and water).

These are both obviously war crimes and should be discussed as such.

https://www.justsecurity.org/89403/the-siege-of-gaza-and-the-starvation-war-crime/

maxkennerly, 8 months ago to random

Remarkable how most of the major companies have the same AI business model, which is "how can I pay the least amount of money to humans to create an app that does a bad job replacing humans?"

God forbid they pay a bunch of humans to build a good product that augments what other humans are doing.

https://gizmodo.com/github-copilot-ai-microsoft-openai-chatgpt-1850915549

maxkennerly, 8 months ago to random

One of the few promises Elon Musk made about Twitter that he actually fulfilled: he said he was going to ruin its ability to moderate content and he did.

"Many of the posts have been seeded by Hamas to terrorize civilians and take advantage of the lack of content moderation on some social media sites — particularly X and Telegram — according to a Hamas official and social media experts interviewed by The New York Times."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/technology/hamas-violent-videos-online.html

maxkennerly, 8 months ago to random

Remarkable collapse of the thinly-sourced WSJ story on Iran being behind the attack by Hamas. IDF, US, and outside experts all knocking it down.

https://twitter.com/Max_Fisher/status/1711369137941881293?t=ZNDGSgsS16RI3hjjkCIOkA&s=19

maxkennerly, 8 months ago to random

This article is a reminder that Tesla is no closer than any other company to automated driving (and indeed they might be farther behind), they're just far more aggressive in their marketing and deployment of unreliable beta tech.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/tesla-autopilot-crash-analysis/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f001&utm_source=reddit.com