Yeah I get that, and your frustration is totally valid, it’s just an insane uphill battle to continue producing original content without some evilcorp swooping in to steal all your shit and then resell it as their own. This is the only “solution” they’ve found to still making enough money to eat. But the extra friction is definitely a bit annoying, and they know that.

Their reporting is often based on FOIA requests, which are a public service, so they give free access to those articles without a paywall.

They have been open and transparent that they require a free account to read their free articles because it prevents LLMs from illegally scraping and plagiarizing their original reporting. Logging in to a free account is a small price to pay to ensure these actual journalists continue to produce excellent work.

Undoubtedly. I can’t think of a reason they wouldn’t start doing this immediately if this ridiculous deal somehow went through.

Yeah, it’s really frustrating that we’re watching the grift in real time, and influential outlets like the NYTimes are making all the predicable mistakes and further inflating the bubble to the point where I’m starting to think it won’t be allowed to pop. It feels like there’s nothing we can do about it, because enough people have slurped up the slop and are convinced they already can’t live without it.

I argue with coworkers every day about the useless generated shit they put in front of me. I argue with friends who believe the grifters have their interests in mind. I’ve started arguing with executives at my company who are hinting that everyone has to start using LLMs. I argue with anyone any time they mischaracterize ChatGPT as AI and not an LLM. I argue with my colleagues who work in environmental sciences that they of all people should understand the practical harms these tools are causing.

It’s an uphill battle, and I feel like we’ve already lost. It’s exhausting seeing the direction we’re going, knowing it’s the wrong way to go, and yet being stuck on the stupid train going there.

California could definitely do it, we have a lot of seats in Congress, more R’s than you might expect. The main obstacle is the nonpartisan redistricting commission, but there’s already a ballot measure proposed that will exempt the 2026 election from the nonpartisan commission, depending on what Texas does.

It’s basically a hedge: if Texas fucks with their districts, we’ll go around the CA commission and fuck with our districts. If Texas does nothing, we’ll do nothing and CA’s nonpartisan commission retains its power. I might be oversimplifying a bit, but I just filled out a survey asking if I’d support this (I definitely do).

I actually shop for groceries way better when I’m hungry. If I’ve recently eaten, I have trouble imagining myself enjoying anything I’m going to buy, even if I eat it often. I’ve actually compared my hauls after shopping hungry vs shopping full: shopping on a full stomach my bags are noticeably emptier with less variety, and more unhealthy stuff. When shopping hungry I buy way more fruits, vegetables, some slightly adventurous ingredients, and in general much more interesting items that I’m more likely to enjoy in a few days.

But to each their own, I think I’m the outlier here.

Yeah, in meetings with outside teams I can usually understand it and it’s tolerable. But honestly I prefer if the person running the meeting prepares enough to make formal introductions for everyone. The worst is being in a meeting with someone nobody knows, and was never introduced nor given the opportunity to introduce themselves.

My manager does it perfectly, she quickly goes around and says “for the new folks on the call, that’s Bertram, he does x, y, and z. That’s pishadoot, they’ve been here for years and do a, b, and c. It reminds her team that she values them and shows the outside folks that’s she’s a competent manager.

She’s seriously awesome. This is the kind of protest we need more of. Her logic is perfectly sound too: by tying them up on the road, those particular agents aren’t terrorizing her community.

Also, I watched the sped up video from start to finish, and I don’t think the ICE car used their turn signal at all. That’s clearly the least of their crimes, but still, most of us have to follow traffic laws.

I’ve worked with people who will sometimes interrupt the natural pre-meeting banter to force an icebreaker. Like, what the hell do you think we were just doing you corporate ass-hat?

Frankly, I’m deeply suspicious of anyone who forces a “round robin” of any kind during any meeting. It very rarely has any value and tells me that that person shouldn’t be running the meeting, or that that particular meeting didn’t need to happen.

I may have missed a step in my description, but regardless the issue is when going from Communities back to Home. It always refreshes Home, but I would rather it stay in the state I left it so I can resume browsing.

lol I knew I couldn’t be the only one!

Ironic, since the writ of Habeas corpus predates even the Magna Carta.

Habeas corpus goes back to around 1166, which for those keeping track, is only around 600 years before the founding of the USA…

Clearly nobody is stopping you, but we are trying to articulate why you’re getting such negative reactions. At least limit your posts to a relevant community that wants to see this kind of material. Enjoy your trolling!

I posted this response a while back about a different “AI” comic in the same style, which might have also been yours, but the thread was deleted after lots of people replied so I don’t know for sure. Regardless, it still applies:

I don’t want to pile on too hard, because hopefully you’ve internalized some of the other criticisms in the comments, but this is actually a great example of why “AI” art makes so many people so angry.

On its face, this is a nice-ish comic strip with a joke that might get a smirk or chuckle in response. The moment you look at the image critically, that all falls apart. And don’t you want people to look at your art critically? Don’t you want people to zoom in and enjoy every part of what you created? Thing is, this isn’t your art. You didn’t create it. You wrote some sentences, and then an algorithm (without permission) used the real, painstakingly created artwork of artists from all over the world and throughout history, to spit out some pixels that look like this. You didn’t pick up a pencil or stylus, you didn’t ink the lines and labor over the facial expression or color pallets. You didn’t build on a lifetime of artistic experience to create something new in a style that you’ve been developing for yourself. And then you called it OC to make it seem like you had actually done all that. That may seem okay to you, but it’s deeply insulting to lots of people.

I’m a shitty visual artist. I couldn’t draw to save my life. And that’s totally okay, not everyone is Van Gogh. I find other outlets for my artistic impulses.

FYI the author, Samantha Cole, left Vice years ago and is one of the co-founders of 404 Media. She does solid journalism over there now.

Wow, that sounds awesome. Based on all that, the devs seem solid, I think I’ll give it a try. Thanks for the response!

The USA was founded to avoid tariffs on imported goods imposed by a monarch. Trump just took a gross big mac dump on your desire for historical consistency, and then gold-plated it.

This looks pretty amazing, but it also looks huge, and for a game this big I would need assurances that I won’t lose my progress if it leaves early access. Have the devs said anything about their completion timeline? I’ve never played anything in early access, because I frankly don’t trust devs to respect my time. Thoughts?

Good. I have a few friends who were Columbia professors and researchers, and they all recently quit and took jobs elsewhere, mostly at much smaller state schools that still respect academic freedom and integrity.

Columbia should be ashamed.

That’s an awesome cat name.