@richard_merren@mastodon.social
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richard_merren

@richard_merren@mastodon.social

Not internet famous and totally fine with that

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JamesGleick, to random
@JamesGleick@zirk.us avatar

Telling detail from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse (by Nate Schweber for the NY Times): The NYPD is working in the service of the defendant Trump, rather than the people of New York.

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@JamesGleick This is a real dilemma. I'm perfectly happy to see Trump humiliated in any way, but I'm also happy to see the parasitic paparazzi photographers have their jobs made harder. Watching news bureaus cut reporting and research budgets while they continue to support a thriving ecosystem of intrusive packs of photographers capturing meaningless photos of famous people entering buildings or eating in restaurants is just sad.

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@JamesGleick All true. But if news organizations have limited resources, then chasing photos of Trump entering the courthouse seems like a poor choice that sacrifices more important priorities. But I don't know the news business, so I defer to your opinion of the importance and worth of this activity.

dangillmor, to random
@dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

New Yorker: "The Problem with Defining Antisemitism"
https://www.newyorker.com/news/persons-of-interest/the-problem-with-defining-antisemitism

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@dangillmor TL;DR: The widely adopted and well-accepted modern definition of antisemitism is suddenly condemning language from people that we otherwise like and agree with politically and that makes us uncomfortable.

serge, to random
@serge@babka.social avatar

Look folks, when a Jew says "I feel unsafe" or "Jews deserve to feel safe" and your response is "Netanyahu", understand that Jews will take this the same way as if you had said "Rothschild!"

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@serge The response should be "Jews deserve to feel safe." There is a period at the end of that and nothing needs to follow it.

lolgop, to random
@lolgop@journa.host avatar

All antisemitism is abhorrent. But people need to know when they're being played. One of the richest and most powerful guys ever to live is building a Nazi minting machine and Republicans aligned with him want us all focused on Ivy league campuses to undermine the horror at Netanyahu's atrocities.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-musk-nazi-extremist-white-nationalist-accounts-rcna145020

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@lolgop People do need to know when they are being played, and Republican focus on antisemitism on campus is naked opportunism by politicians who otherwise welcome antisemites and help spread their message. But please don't dismiss campus antisemitism as some kind of fake Jewish conspiracy just because Republicans are exploiting it for gain. That's irresponsible and does a disservice to students who express real concerns and are facing real threats and dangers.

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

The conclusion: subways and NY are safe https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLaM1xfj/

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffjarvis Yeah, but still don't touch anything down there

TonyStark, to random
@TonyStark@progressivecafe.social avatar

Kennedy used to be an environmentalist. His current positions on the environment are more libertarian, since he doesn't believe in cutting greenhouse gasses through regulation or jump-starting green energy with subsidies. He wants to let the market work its “wonders.”

He's also a crypto fan, which generates about 23 metric tons of CO2 annually.

His friends and colleagues at NRDC are right.

RFK Jr.’s onetime allies in environmental advocacy call for him to drop out |
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/19/politics/robert-kennedy-natural-resources-defense-council/index.html

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@TonyStark His bigotry and adherence to crazy conspiracy theories should be enough on their own. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/15/us/politics/rfk-jr-remarks-covid.html

popey, to random
@popey@mastodon.social avatar

"Select all squares with
buses
If there are none, click Skip"

  1. It's one bus, not buses plural
  2. It's a coach where I come from (I have no idea if it's an actual "bus")
  3. It's "SKIP" not "Skip"
richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@popey Now we know for sure that you are a bot. Tour secret has been revealed.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

How many things can we monger?
• cheese
• fear
• fish
• scare
• hate

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@glennf Scara

18+ NinaBernstein1, to random
@NinaBernstein1@journa.host avatar

An eloquent protest to Columbia’s genuflection before MAGA McCarthyism.
Anti-woke Republicans attacked Columbia University. It capitulated | Alisa Solomon, Marianne Hirsch, Sarah Haley and Helen Benedict | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/18/columbia-university-congress-antisemitism-republicans-gaza

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@NinaBernstein1 This part is spot on. Jewish students and faculty are just theater props to these Republicans.

zachklipp, to random
@zachklipp@androiddev.social avatar

Google went from “don’t be evil” to “help commit genocide or you’re fired”.

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@zachklipp This protest group has been around for three years and nobody was fired until they disrupted the office and refused repeated offers to disperse with no consequences. I understand that you and others feel strongly about not wanting your company to do business with Israel (though it is not an opinion I share), but it is hard to fathom why someone would stay for years at a company they find morally objectionable, or assume they could keep their job after this type of office conduct.

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@zachklipp we have no idea if these folks fall in those categories, but if they do they were fools to participate or not to accept multiple offers to walk away before arrest. If your family's health and well being is tied to keeping your job so strongly that COBRA isn't enough, and even more so if your family's visa is, it is insanely irresponsible to take a protest this far (no matter how unfair we might think that is). It's more likely that they thought they would face no consequences at all.

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

"Pivot to populism"? I don't know what that means. Biden has always been the labor president.
In a swing through Pennsylvania, Biden pivots to populism https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/17/biden-scranton-steelworkers-populism-trump/

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffjarvis "Biden pivots to support rail travel"

josh, to communicationscholars
@josh@sciences.social avatar

Listened to The Daily yesterday, which featured Cade Metz's reporting that OpenAI and its competitors have scraped the entire English-language Internet as input for their LLMs and it's almost as if it should be a limit problem from a @stevenstrogatz's book. What happens to the sum of copyright infringement penalties as the number of infractions approaches infinity?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/16/podcasts/the-daily/ai-data.html

cc @communicationscholars

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@josh @stevenstrogatz @communicationscholars How can you use the output of an LLM for something in your business and have any amount of confidence that you won't get sued by someone for copyright infringement?

TonyStark, to random
@TonyStark@progressivecafe.social avatar

If you’re sharing stuff such as “it’s the Jews” or “it’s all secretly AIPAC”, you’re not progressive, you’re not an “indie journalist”, and you’re not digging up some underground Jewish cabal activity.

You’re a conspiracy theorist no different from Alex Jones or Marjorie Taylor Greene spreading space lasers and people drinking blood and all the right wing stuff you’ve claimed to abhor. You’re no different.

The Jews Aren’t Taking Away TikTok - The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/antisemitism-conspiracy-theories-tiktok/678088/

“Characteristic of anti-Semitic online discourse, these videos and others like them interchangeably reference individual American Jews, American Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, American pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC, and the state of Israel, as though they are all part of one single- minded international conspiracy to take down TikTok. When a commenter asked Carroll to "look into universal studios pulling their music from TikTok," a reference to the Universal Music conglomerate's dispute with TikTok over royalties, Carroll replied, "Universal CEO is a Jewish man."”
“Consider recent American history: In 2018, a far-right gunman who blamed Jews for mass immigration murdered 11 people in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue. In 2019, assailants tied to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement attacked a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, killing three; one of the shooters had written on social media about Jews controlling the government. In 2022, an Islamic extremist took an entire congregation hostage in Colleyville, Texas, and demanded that a rabbi get a convict released from a nearby prison. These perpetrators-white supremacist, Black extremist, radical Islamist-had essentially nothing in common other than their belief that a Jewish cabal governed world affairs and was the cause of their problems.”
“The reality is the reverse: Jews constitute just 2 percent of the American population, and although they exercise influence like any other minority, they frequently disagree among themselves and do not dictate the destiny of the majority. Politicians voting against TikTok are pursuing their conception of the national interest, not being suborned to serve some nebulous Jewish interest. Remove the Jews from the equation, and the situation will be the same. Conspiracy theorists typically claim to be combatting concealed power structures. But as in this case, their delusions make them unable to perceive the way power actually works. Thus, conspiratorial anti-Semitism hobbles its adherents, preventing them from rationally organizing to advance their own causes by distracting them with fantastical Jewish plots.”

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@TonyStark This is often expressed with euphemisms like "Soros-funded" or "globalists" or "industrialist" or whatever so that it is a dog-whistle--recognizable to the believers but reasonable or innocuous-sounding to others. We hear it and we recognize it, and we are told we are overreacting or "weaponizing antisemitism" when we call it out. But we have to keep pushing back on it.

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

Trying too hard: Trump loves nothing. New York hates Trump. WaPo says: "Donald Trump was, in short, a certain type of New Yorker—brash, boorish, bombastic." No, Trump is in no way a New Yorker.
Trump trial further splinters his relationship with his beloved New York https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/17/trump-hush-money-new-york-manhattan-queens/

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffjarvis We Texans are saddled with the baggage of so many horrible politicians that hail from our state that it causes us deep shame. So it is from a place of humility, not malice, that I tell New Yorkers to stop trying to deny Trump is a New Yorker. You need to reckon with the fact that New York City is the environment that created, nurtured, and vomited out this abominable man on the rest of us. New York is a part of the US, contributing both good and bad bits just like everywhere else.

GottaLaff, to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

Via Ryan Reilly:

You’d expect your average American not to know the outcomes of these cases, but quite something for a justice to just say something factually wrong on the bench when it’s about incidents that happened in their own workplace.

Lawrence Hurley:

During argument today, Justice Alito said people who have disrupted Supreme Court proceedings have not faced jail time. That's not correct.

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@GottaLaff How are we in a place where people are saying with a straight face that a sworn law enforcement officer who threatened to violently stop Congress's presidential certification process, and then joined a violent attempt to stop Congress's presidential certification process, and took his own video of his participation in a violent attempt to stop Congress's presidential certification, should avoid punishment?

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@GottaLaff It's just gross. Alito has no shame.

GottaLaff, to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

lol

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@GottaLaff Biden is spending late nights blowing up Iranian missile launchers in Yemen that are trying to indiscriminately kill Israeli civilians just days before Trump is falling asleep in the first hours of his criminal trial for business fraud to cover up a years-old affair with a nude model in a secret deal he made with the National Inquirer.

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

Should gefilte fish poutine be a thing?

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@atomicpoet Gefilte fish tacos with red horseradish salsa. It's passover-friendly if they are on corn tortillas.

CuriousMagpie, to bookstodon
@CuriousMagpie@wandering.shop avatar

Ancillary Justice (book 1 in series) by Ann Leckie is only $2.99 on Amazon today.
@bookstodon

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@CuriousMagpie @bookstodon Great read.

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

The Times manages to insult Joe Biden, everybody over 65, and the intelligence of its entire audience all at once. Surprise: Old people are too smart to vote for a fascist. Imagine that.
How ‘All in the Family’ Explains Biden’s Strength Among Seniors https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/06/upshot/older-voters.html?pvid=r27YtBsbsWNeyZqBkHGX8W0P&ugrp=c&smid=tw-share

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffjarvis All in the family ended in 79, and Archie was a wildly popular figure. In 1980 these Boomers put Reagan in the White House, and their liberal influence on policy was pretty hard to find throughout that whole decade. Boomers didn't save us then and they are not going to save us now.

GottaLaff, to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

To clarify. Via Rupar:

Ian, you're wrong. I watched the speech. Eric unpacks the relevant context here. It's a very odd look to be spinning for like this.

Eric Columbus:

Wise conway thread below about Trump's "bloodbath" remarks. And per @metzgov transcription Trump said the effect on the car industry would be "the least of" the effects of the "bloodbath for the country." This is the opposite of just talking about cars.

Me: Here's the thread:

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@GottaLaff Also: the car stuff in the surrounding context was crazy. Any republican complaining about lack of context should be asked if they support the MASSIVE protectionist tax increase on car purchases that Trump is proposong in the context, and whether they think it would violate the USMCA treaty that Trump negotiated.

AbandonedAmerica, to random
@AbandonedAmerica@mastodon.social avatar

The remains of the 18-20 foot high busts of US presidents that were once at Presidents Park.

Find out what happened to them: https://www.abandonedamerica.us/the-president-heads

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@AbandonedAmerica You found the missing half of the Ozymandius statue?

ben, to random
@ben@werd.social avatar

So, I have a confession to make. https://werd.io/2024/chatgpt-as-a-writing-partner

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@ben If this helps your creative process, then that's great. But don't assume that the points of the critique are ACTUAL critiques of your work. They are a randomly derived set of words meant to sound like a valid critique of a work of fiction and there is no real critical thought that goes into generating them. They should be treated like horoscopes in the newspaper or fortune cookies.

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