People who undertook this hobby weren’t quite sure where the pigeon would be when the pictures were taken. They just had to wing it.

Don’t ask questions when you know the answer is fowl.

You can learn about spelling rules at your leisure but it might cause a seizure.

They ran through the door and got a fresh slice right into his mouth. Just in the nick of time!

Soon, they will be able to extract his essence and bring forth the next generation of their secret sauce.

Haha, exactly!

Shapeshifting is the universal superpower that gives you nearly everything:

• Change your appearance/sex on the fly (mega appeal to trans folks). The obvious benefit.
• Need extra reach? Just elastigirl your arms and legs. It’s better than telekinesis in some ways!
• Want to get somewhere fast? Make yourself light and grow wings. You can fly! Maybe not as fast as “superhero flight” but still way faster and more efficient than running. Also don’t need “sticky hands/feet” to climb: Just give yourself some serious claws.
• Want to swim fast? Give yourself fins! You might even manage gills and be able to breathe underwater.
• Need to stay warm in a super cold environment? Give yourself lots of insulating fat and thick fur! Polar bear mode!
• Need to be strong/move something heavy? Also polar bear mode!
• Depending on your skill, you can hide really well. Not as good as invisibility but still great.
• You can make stuff with your body! If you have super fine control, you could make diamonds.
• You can store stuff inside yourself the easy way. Literal pocket. As dry as you want (though probably still quite warm).

What it lacks:

• Mind control. Though, with enough psychological prowess, you could get people addicted to having sex with you (maybe?) 🤷
• Magic stuff.

The suspects were audibly upset that their underground cartel has finally come to light.

Doesn’t matter. It’s the act of recording that’s setting people off, not the publishing.

I don’t know what the law is in Belgium but I bet it’s the act of recording without consent that’s illegal. Many European nations have laws like that and it seems short-sighted and wrong. It enables corruption.

These are both anti-data center messages. That’s orthogonal to AI.

I bet if you asked these people if we should get rid of all data centers they’d say, “yes.” Completely unaware that they’re using (and relying on) services running out of data centers every day.

I’m surprised farmers aren’t up in arms about this. This is the exact data that goes into the weather models that they rely on.

Is it going to rain much this season? Who TF knows! Trump removed all the sensors!

Are they really concerned that giant, ugly glasses contain not-actually-hidden-at-all cameras when actual devices, specifically designed to be hidden exist that do a vastly superior job?

This article is clickbait.

Aside: IMHO, recording anyone in public should always be allowed. The fact that it’s men recording women shouldn’t matter in the slightest. You have no expectation of privacy when you’re in public.

If we ban recording in public without permission, tons of crimes will go unreported and actual villains will be able to get away with all sorts of horrific crimes. Imagine getting arrested or fined for recording someone being mugged, or kidnapped, or similar.

Are the cops beating someone to death right in front of you? Better not record that without asking for permission! Just walk out into the open and kindly ask for permission from both the cops and the victim.

I kinda feel bad about it, but whenever I see news that criminals have successfully dug a tunnel, I think, “cool!”. Then I want to see pictures and I judge them.

From the pics, I’d give this tunnel a 7 out of ten. The walls are a bit messy, indicating they ran into some trouble while digging, but other than that it looks like it was built to last and could serve as a nice place to hang out on really hot days.

It looks like the average person could stand up in there! The floors are nice and level too.

Not enough space to pass by someone pushing a cart full of drugs ore/rocks but nothing’s perfect. “Just climb over” is a suitable option when a tunnel is almost exclusively used in a one-way fashion.

Intellectual property can’t be “stolen”. That’s not a thing.

It can be copied, though but that doesn’t sound nearly as nefarious.

Remember: When you “steal” something, that’s “theft”. It means the original owner doesn’t have it anymore. If the AI companies were actually stealing the NYT’s IP, they’d head into the office and find all their computers/servers were missing and when we search the Internet Archive for older articles they’d be gone. Stolen!

…but all that is neither here nor there because what this guy is actually bitching about is AI summaries of the news. Whether you think AI can do a good job doing that doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that AI can read the whole article on behalf of the user and then present the content in any form that doesn’t include the original advertisements.

Hypothetical: Imagine you’ve got a 100% free and open source AI model installed and setup on your local computer (e.g. in a chat window, as an extension in your browser, integrated in the OS, etc… doesn’t matter). You ask it:

What's today's news about beans?

The AI model then calls curl a few dozen times (or just uses its internal URL loading capabilities), hitting the New York Times website. It then generates some summaries based on what it found along with links to the original articles (so you can verify or dive deeper into any given story).

The NYT chief is saying is that should be illegal. It’s “theft”!

To that I say, “bullshit!” I will run whatever TF AI model I want and use it however I want, thank you very much!

It’s important to note that the Big AI companies paid the New York Times to load all their historical articles into their training data. So that aspect of AI is not at issue.

“If you’re sitting at home, which is true for the millions of people who are able-bodied on Medicaid, on average, you’re spending 6.1 hours watching television, or just hanging around,” Oz said. “So, as a path to prosperity, Congress very wisely said, ‘Let’s get you back into the workforce.’”

Why? Why do they need to be in the workforce? I pay taxes so people like that stay out of the workforce!

If they’re on Medicaid there’s a reason for that. Why TF should we be making them work? Just “because”?

Not everyone is meant to work! Some people are born to be wards of the state. Pretending people like this don’t exist is insanity.

Other people get sick or have accidents that make them wards of the state. That’s what “the system” is for!

Also, let’s not pretend that this doesn’t cost much. The elderly, and people on permanent disability are the most expensive to care for. That’s why the Trump administration wants to kick them off… Because for each person that actually needs this vital government service that they kick off, they can save something like $100,000-130,000 (yes, that’s the real figure… It’s from Kaiser Family Foundation data).

This is why it wouldn’t really cost that much to move everyone off private health insurance and into a socialized program (e.g. Medicare for all or similar proposals). Because we’re already paying for the most expensive people/illnesses, tacking on the remaining healthy population would only add a marginal amount to the total cost and save taxpayers enormous amounts of money (compared to the amounts they’re currently paying for health insurance).

That might be OK but don’t put denture tablets into your dishwasher. There’s two problems:

• Denture tablets are meant to work inside a single glass of water overnight. Dishwashers will use 3-4 gallons of water, so you’d need a lot of tablets for it to actually do anything at all.
• Denture tablets often have “flavoring” that’s meant to stick to the dentures long after using them. The hot water of the dishwasher can amplify that effect, leaving your dishes tasting like mint for a few cycles. Not a big deal (it’s not toxic or anything) but mint flavor doesn’t go well with everything 😁

I swear, if the Christian heaven exists and St Peter is there at the gates, this is how it will go for those people:

St. Peter: “Let’s see… It says here that you proclaimed that it’s immoral for a person to change their gender because it’s ‘against God’s plan.’”

Self-described Christian: “Yes. That’s correct.”

St. Peter: “But it also says that you had surgery to remove tumors and had your wisdom teeth taken out.”

Self-described Christian: “Uh, yes. What does that have to do with anything?”

St. Peter: “According to your regular proclamations of absolute morality, what you’re born with is God’s plan… So by that logic, having surgery of any kind is immoral. Hypocrisy is a great sin”

Self-described Christian: “That’s not the same thing! I just did what my doctors told me to do! They’re the medical experts, not me.”

St. Peter: “So if doctors recommended a person get their sex changed, then it would be OK?”

Self-described Christian: “No. Those would be incredibly immoral doctors!”

St Peter: “I see. Ya know, Jesus harshest words were reserved for hypocrites.” (He presses the button and Self-described Christian drops down into hell)

St Peter: “NEEEEXT!”

Atheist: “I uh… Just tried to be nice.”

St. Peter, as he unlocks the gates: “Welcome to heaven!”

To play it on dates, of course!

“So that’s what happened to you.”

How else are we going to get catgirls? 🤷

I’m an atheist but if there were a god that wanted to send a clear message about the consequences of picking the most antichrist-like leader to run your country it would be this:

You vote antichrist, you get a plague.

It already happened once 🤷

And by “antichrist” I don’t mean the literal antichrist from the Bible. I mean, the person that’s most unlike Christ:

• Hates immigrants and the poor.
• Super racist (let’s just say he would never wash anyone’s feet if they weren’t Caucasian).
• Hoards wealth.
• Lies constantly.
• Cheated on all his wives. Has children from three!
• Intentionally spreads plague (e.g. COVID-19 spread first in Democratic strongholds/cities so he decided that was good for his chances at reelection and told people they didn’t need to wear masks or get vaccinated).
• Extremely vain. I don’t know if it’s possible to be more vain than Trump.

It’s actually him replaying how his last meeting with Putin went.

He was on his knees at the time though.

She is continuing to work despite the diagnosis, and will be joining the White House’s new advisory council on AI, the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Of all the fucking things. Forget all the blatant corruption and illegal behavior of this administration for a moment. This is why Republican administrations are always a bad idea: They put non-experts in roles that require experts!

I’m 48 and every single Republican president in my lifetime has pulled shit like this. From John Tower (first Bush) to the severe incompetency of the George W. Bush administration (e.g. “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”) to the catastrophic incompetency and corruption of both Trump administrations.

Democratic administrations aren’t perfect, but they at least try to appoint actually qualified individuals into any given position. For Republicans, the only qualification necessary seems to be loyalty and/or making friends with the right people (and who knows what back room/hidden dealings).