Misconceived story of the day: paralleling a family's decision to leave Iowa because their child can no longer get transgender care with a family's decision to leave Oregon because they're fed up with liberals, saying both are "political" decisions and this is why we are fracturing as a society. This framing flattens out so much relevant detail – mainly the existential threat of policies targeting trans people – that the story becomes meaningless, anti-informative https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/07/us/politics/politics-states-moving.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
The mass appeal of Taylor Swift, and also "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" and Beyonce and any number of other mainstream, generally freewheeling pop culture phenomena that sound distinctively of the present, not 1956, are signs that the culture wars – for all their destructiveness – are really a series of panicked rearguard actions https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-template-for-right-wingers-upset-with-taylor-swift
This is impressive, but still seems like there will be certain limits – like those journalists and all of us face – for ChatGPT in being able to reliably track or interpret emerging events, whether over the span of hours, days, or weeks. There will be more fragmentary accounts, confusion, divergent reports/interpretations, misinformation, etc. the closer you are to the present moment
https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-says-chatgpt-can-now-browse-internet-2023-09-27/
@f8d9bc1c The campaign "narrative" at the moment is so comically skewed/clichéd that you do have to wonder if political reporters are thinking "is it too much?" But no, they probably aren't
The idea of customer rewards programs is to gamify something tedious – flying, buying coffee, etc – then be relatively transparent and generous at first, then over time make the rules progressively more opaque and the rewards ever more meager or unachievable, until it's not clear why anyone would play the game anymore.
Indicating how Musk is transgressing the rules/expectations of "great men" (by not being so great in various ways), of the establishment media, of corporate image-making, and of basic "let's make a profit" business economics – all of which are nice to see attacked, but the entertainment value alone is clearly not worth the price
Also, the original account is now in doubt, at minimum he has to clarify which thing happened - did Musk not turn something on (a more passive act, even if the result is the same), or turn something off?
Notes by John McQuaid | export