frederick
@unfocused.xyz
Writer | Music Producer | Seattle Sports Fan he/him/his seldom writings - unfocused.xyz not on spotify
As always-Sarah & co produce such great videos I know literally nothing about any video topics covered by this channel Yet i’m always entertained & left with random knowledge about fandoms I wish I knew exsisted back when If I was in Seattle still, I would 💯% go see her live show in a couple weeks
IT'S UP!!! A brief history of the illegal hunger games a generation of teens ran on Fanfiction dot net, and the insane and complex economics thereof. NEW VIDEO now on YouTube. youtu.be/PH3U77KeT00
Is Sicario an allegory about Capitalism with Del Toro being the ‘free market'
Before all of this AI grift is over, I imagine Sam Altman will be remembered as Elizabeth Holmes + SBF but with biblical-level Madoff-type effects laid upon the peddlers he hitched to his sides.
Love that this was served up to me on youtube.
The Entire Obsession Movie Vocoded to Miss The Rage
YouTube video by VocodedMusicGH3
youtu.be
Astonishing. RFK Jr. adds 8 members to a 6 member FDA advisory panel. 6 of them were sellers of peptides, and the 7th a compounding pharmacist. In an 8-6 vote with all 8 votes coming from these new panel members, the panel approved 4 peptides against the objections of FDA scientists.
FDA Panel Supports Lifting Restrictions on Four Peptides (Gift Article)
In an all-day hearing, the agency’s scientists argued against allowing broad access to unproven drugs that the agency had banned three years ago.
nytimes.com
Joined the Times Tech Report to talk about Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle's $1.65bn in hidden off-balance sheet debt, and how I fear a subprime data center crisis is brewing thanks to private credit funding the AI buildout with pension and insurance funds. youtu.be/bTwnn-5TpmQ?...
AI companies are hiding more debt than you think | Ed Zitron
YouTube video by The Tech Report
youtu.be
Horrific read on the Joliet Treatment Center, which has had 70 fires in the last three years—some set by desperate incarcerated people in a facility where some fire alarms are turned off and some sprinklers don't work.
A Prison on Fire
Designed to help people with serious mental illness, Joliet Treatment Center repeatedly failed to prevent or respond to fires, despite two deaths.
themarshallproject.org
“Being reliant on subscribers for the majority of the money we make, it's like a real promise...You give us money, we give you good writing. It's very straightforward.” Read Ravenous' @jayasaxena.com in @sf.gazetteer.co about the new wave of independent food media. sf.gazetteer.co/welcome-to-t...
Welcome to the artisanal food media era
The portions may be smaller, but independent restaurant and recipe publications are savoring every morsel
sf.gazetteer.co
Here's former conservative Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson propagating the lie that taxing billionaires will hurt family farmers. He's now with something called Saving America's Family Enterprises, a shadowy group that I guarantee you is funded by billionaires. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
Opinion | I’m from Nebraska. Here’s what wealth-tax advocates don’t realize.
Farmers will be hit hard by any levy that taxes asset value.
washingtonpost.com
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404 Media is an independent media company founded by technology journalists Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, Samantha Cole, and Joseph Cox.
404media.co
People act like it’s impossible to do the right thing and succeed but its actually pretty easy to do it and have everyone love you and you can even be a goofy silly guy and do it
Guess who had the integrity not to accept $1 million to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival last year?
Over on Twitter, the usual group of people are in total meltdown mode over this, but she was his stunt double during the scene with the Laestrygonian giants. The giants were all played by people over 7 feet tall. The doubles they used for Odysseus' crew were mostly under 5 feet tall.
Hell yeah
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed on Apple TV was quite good! I throughly enjoyed it. The techno-laden score is face-melting (in a good way obvs)
Haven’t had Netflix but only for 2 months during the holidays since 2020. There’s no reason for it. Paying for Netflix subsidizes this bs.
Netflix used AI to make 17 minutes of a documentary 'twice as fast and at half the cost'—as streaming competition drives up content spending to $20 billion | Fortune
The streaming company touted the efficiencies of AI in its Q2 earnings, while stressing that movies will still be 'made by people who make movies.'
fortune.com
Somehow AZ has a 70MM IMAX so going to see The Odyssey next week as all the other showings were PACKED.
I -never- worry about my creativity "running out". I worry about the fact that I may not be able to afford to be a full time artist because support for the arts has disappeared, the outright theft of artist's work by AI & a complete breakdown of the value of culture in general
Creative careers are fraught with worry. Constantly thinking your best ideas are behind you, that you're done. Raffi even has balm for adults.
Been saying it’s ridiculous that often when these apps are mentioned the stores are a footnote when they’re there, quite literally, profiting off of them.
Apple and Google ordered to purge 'nudify' apps from App Stores | TechCrunch
In letters sent to Apple and Google, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said that both companies have long been aware that they are hosting apps in violation of state law.
techcrunch.com
the Suno hack "reveals"/reminds that these companies do not give a shit about artists, people, culture, their customers, or one God damned thing besides making money off other people's work they are as festering rot on a wet board, and of equivalent value
Customer emails/phone numbers & Stripe payment details were also hacked; no one was ever notified because the company deemed it wasn't important to
Good news folks! Slack and Discord alternative Chatto just went open source. Self-hosting option will be available soon 🕺 Want to see it on PikaPods? chatto.run
Chatto — Self-hostable team chat
Chatto is a fast, fully-featured chat app for teams and communities who care about owning their data.
chatto.run
Has anyone written that Altman is where Elizabeth Holmes would be right now if she was a beneficiary of being a man in a patriarchy? Yanno the whole taking the bs as far as possible. Her ways hurt ppl &worse. Serving time now. His ways killed people. Free for now. SBF in shambles in the corner
I probably should work this out more before posting & I’m sure its been said before but Gen-AI videos made for attention during moments/events entering our increasingly limited cultural zeitgeist, that often end up circulating without attribution, context, labels. etc, is giving exhibitionist energy
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
The big literary discourse on twitter right now is whether The Hobbit—a children’s book that won children’s lit awards and was literally written for the author’s children—is appropriate reading for children or in fact such a difficult book most adults can’t “get their head around” it.
There’s a joke in there somewhere about him waiting until after Pride Month.