2222 days since the start of the pandemic
It’s been exactly 2,222 days since the official start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In case you were wondering.
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Hegseth turning the screws on Anthropic
Secretary of Defense Hegseth is threatening to invoke the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to give the military unfettered access to Claude, their AI model. Unlike Google, OpenAI and xAI, Anthropic has so far refused to allow their model to be used for fully autonomous military targeting operations and domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens.
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Making America Hot Again
A few days ago the White House announced they were eliminating Obama-era incentivizes for car engines that automatically turn off at red lights. The feature saves gas and reduces the more noxious emissions car engines produced at low RPM, but in some cars (especially non-hybrids) the air conditioning doesn’t work as well with the engine
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The 1% solution
From TalkingPointMemo, on the Supreme Court oral arguments challenging the Idaho ban on trans girls paying in girls sports: The justices spent most of their time during oral arguments on the equal protection claims, and seemed to coalesce behind a position that could have ramifications for small minorities beyond the trans community: that Idaho and
The deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter
The Financial Times just coined the phrase “the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter,” which honestly is the best turn of phrase I’ve heard since enshitification. What’s going on is that X (the aforementioned site) recently released an update that makes it incredibly easy to generate, well, deepfake porn based on real images. As
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Remember my dear, the sixth of the year…
David Kurtz, TPM: “Jan. 6 felt that momentous then, not just as a culmination of the conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election, but a clear and present choice about what path the country would take from there… The results of the 2024 election made clear which fork we took, and so we now remember the
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Pick-a-peg
Every year for the past 36 years or so my friend Jay and I have exchanged Christmas gifts that are trapped in some way. Open it without disarming the trap and they’ll “explode” (set off a loud cap, sometimes with accompanying flash paper), fire nerf darts, set off an alarm, or the like. For a
Christmas mash-up
As we say goodbye to Mariah Carey for another year, please enjoy one of my favorite Christmas mash-ups. As one of the YouTube comments put it: “A perfect mix of absolute pure evil and Marilyn Manson.”
Love you for you: Conversations Between Trans Kids and Their Loved Ones
KQED’s California Report Magazine has produced a beautiful deep-dive series Love You For You, featuring six conversations between trans, non-binary and gender-expansive kids across California with their parents, grand-parents and mentors. Well worth checking out, either at the above link or at The California Report Magazine podcast.
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OpenAI required to divulge 20M private chat logs
A magistrate judge in the ongoing copyright suit against OpenAI has ordered them to turn over a sample of 20 million private chat logs from ChatGPT users to plaintiffs, stating that the protective order baring lawyers from leaking the contents and OpenAI’s own “de-identification” of the logs should be sufficient to protect these user’s privacy.
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