I'm so goddamn tired of immediately being driven into a frothing rage about the general stupidity of humanity, within the first 30 seconds of any news broadcast.
Why is it that we keep blaming our kids' depression and anxiety on social media and smartphones instead of the fact that we've turned the entire planet into a burning dumpster fire for them to deal with
@2d86597c "most of our tech platforms are controlled by dubious characters, and there’s not much we can do about it."
Replace "tech platforms" with railroads, city-states, or caves and you've encapsulated a recurring theme in the evolution of civilization from the start.
@bfe78553 I just wish more businesses would make a principled stand against X, but between Apple and the ADL, my hope is very fucking dim at the moment indeed.
@bfe78553 I'd like to think so but in reality it's marked as an opinion piece and squarely in that vein, so I don't really think we can infer anything but the absence of editorial interference. If it were coming from John Micklethwait or someone else in charge, *that* would be a eyebrow-raiser.
@d0d5b475 My 13 year old refrigerator (Kenmore, mfg by LG) is a wretched piece of shit. The handles have broken, some of the trays and other bits too. It's been serviced twice for frost buildup even tho it's supposedly impervious to that. But you know what's worked flawlessly since the day we bought it? the ice maker.
@bfe78553 I think it's more fair to say that a Bloomberg editor took a principled stand. But the *publication* itself hasn't changed its posture on the site, so...
@297fb9e6@3409b63c The Force glow thing was Ani, not Baylan. But this suggests that Ani's Force ghost is going to play an important role in the story - after all, he's the prophecied one who's supposed to return balance to the Force, remember?
@5993e940 This is both the strength and the weakness of Ahsoka: You *really* have to be invested in the stories Filoni wrote and showran, or it's just a meandering bunch of whaaa?
@3409b63c What scares me a little bit is them Grand Moff Tarkin-ing him (a la Rogue One), but maybe all the current sturm und drang around AI actor replication/replacement will quell that. We'll see.
Wondering how they're going to handle Ray Stevenson's untimely passing for S2. Recasting seems essential; Baylan Skoll is so central to the Peridia story.
Speaking of Skoll and Peridia, wicked Mordor/Middle Earth vibes from that final shot of him glowering at the forbidding landscape. There are a *lot* of Tolkien references in Dave Filoni's work, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Wow, my phone just went off to test the National Wireless Emergency Alert System.
I wish, in retrospect, that people had the presence of mind to warn me about it ahead of time, using social media, blog posts, broadcast news segments and other means.
<- sarcasm
"The AIs are takin' our jobs" is just as foolish, stupid and ignorant as "the immigrants are takin' our jobs."
Yet I hear this nonsense constantly from people who are drip-fed trash cable news.
@a819ea45@9f4a251d It's only now that the contract ended that cutting off the vestigial landline made more sense, otherwise there'd be a dumb early termination fee and all that.
Our Xfinity bill shot up because of an expiring 12-month discount, just as it did a year ago. So I called.
me: I noticed our bill went up and I was wondering if we could go repeat whatever pro-forma ritual we need to in order to secure a more reasonable charge again.
them: *laughing* thank you for understanding the situation, sir.
I always try to bear in mind that the customer service people I speak with are *way* more victimized by the shitty behavior of their employers than I will ever be.
Postscript: It was a pleasant enough and ultimately productive call, but if I had another alternative I would jump on it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately 5G home internet isn't a possibility where I live (yet) and there's no other wireline broadband provider around. So it's Xfinity or, I guess, DSL (believe it or not, still exists)
me: There are my keys. Always in the last place you look.
them: well of course they're in the last place you look, because that's where you found them.
People keep reporting that Meta announced the Quest 3 today. No it didn't. Meta announced it in June. Meta announced when you'll be able to buy the thing today.
Oddbean new post about login | logout
Notes by Peter Cohen | export