alyaza

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New York City mayor Eric Adams has had a bad tenure even by the low standards of New York City mayors. He has enraged the city’s progressives with his policies, and his political future looks shaky now that he and his allies are the subjects of overlapping federal corruption charges. Adams’ weakness has already prompted five Democratic challengers to declare their candidacy for mayor, and that number may well increase in coming months.

One of those candidates is socialist Zohran Mamdani, who currently represents parts of Queens in the New York assembly. Mamdani, a 33-year-old with a history of leftist activism for labor and antiwar causes, has won the official endorsement of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, making his candidacy an ambitious step forward for DSA’s burgeoning involvement in New York City politics.

I spoke to Mamdani yesterday about Eric Adams, Donald Trump, and the painstaking task of hauling socialism into the political mainstream.

 

archive.is link

But WIRED reviewed posts from American Patriots Three Percent (AP3) groups and profiles that are still on the platform, including examples where members and leaders brandish AP3 insignia and share photos from their in-person training sessions.

There have also been some recent instances where Facebook has even auto-generated pages for militias. In May, Facebook auto-generated a page for AP3’s Arizona chapter. In June, Facebook auto-generated a page for “AP3 NM [New Mexico] Training Range.” If you hover over the information widget on the page, Facebook’s explainer reads: “This unofficial page was created because people on Facebook have shown interest in this place or business. It’s not affiliated with or endorsed by anyone associated with AP3 Training Range.” (Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has repeatedly come under fire in the past for auto-generating pages for extremist, white supremacist, and terrorist organizations; a whistleblower first flagged the issue in 2020 in a supplement to an earlier petition filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.)

[–] [email protected] 176 points 3 days ago (9 children)

apparently, the path to profitability was "shamelessly sell out on AI hype bullshit"

 

Reddit’s advertising revenue grew to $315.1 million, while “other” revenue reached $33.2 million on account of “data licensing agreements signed earlier this year.” Both Google and OpenAI have cut deals with Reddit to train their AI models on its posts.

In a letter to shareholders, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman attributed the recent increase in users to the platform’s AI-powered translation feature. Reddit started letting users translate posts into French last year before expanding to Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German. Now, Huffman says Reddit plans to expand translation to over 30 countries through 2025.

 

In a graphic at the beginning of the report, the U.N. estimates that in 2023, livestock was responsible for only 6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The number struck me as strange. Because in my previous reporting on animal agriculture, I’ve found that livestock—particularly cattle—are responsible for anywhere from 11 to 20 percent of global emissions, according to a range of peer-reviewed studies.

Seeing this, I immediately considered that industry influence could be to blame. Because like the fossil fuel industry, the animal agriculture industry has a history of pressuring the scientific community to downplay its role in the climate crisis. The industry has recently censored U.N. reports on livestock emissions; pressured the IPCC to remove recommendations to shift to “plant-based diets” from its most recent report; and sent lobbyists to COP28 to convince policymakers that meat is beneficial for the environment.

What I found, however, was more an issue of scientific choice. According to Taryn Fransen, global climate program director at the World Resources Institute and one of the report’s lead authors, the U.N. report only measures direct, or Scope 1, emissions. This includes methane from cow burps, manure, and fertilizer. It doesn’t include indirect, or Scope 2 or 3 emissions for livestock: things like deforestation, growing feed, pasture management, and slaughterhouse waste.

 

The report also referenced a recent survey of climate scientists conducted by the Guardian in which more than three-quarters of the 380 respondents believed humanity will miss the target set in the Paris climate agreement of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures.

There is some encouraging evidence of such decisive action, albeit at insufficient levels so far. Expert organizations like the International Energy Agency project that based on current climate policies, the world is headed toward around 2.5°C global warming by 2100. That’s not enough to meet the Paris climate targets, and yet implementing additional climate policies and solutions in the coming years could improve that outcome even further to levels below the worried expectations of three-quarters of climate scientists.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

As of 2019 the company published 100 articles each day produced by 3,000 outside contributors who were paid little or nothing.[52] This business model, in place since 2010,[53] "changed their reputation from being a respectable business publication to a content farm", according to Damon Kiesow, the Knight Chair in digital editing and producing at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.[52] Similarly, Harvard University's Nieman Lab deemed Forbes "a platform for scams, grift, and bad journalism" as of 2022.[49]

they realized that they could just become an SEO farm/content mill and churn out absurd numbers of articles while paying people table scraps or nothing at all, and they've never changed

 

archive.is link

Everyone loves to judge what rich people do with their money, and no one has a better front-row seat than those they keep closest: their personal assistants. For decades, Brian Daniel worked as a PA for ultrawealthy clients; now, he helps recruit and train other high-level PAs for some of the world’s richest families and top-earning CEOs and has built a deep network of people in the private-service industry along the way. Here, he talks about what a typical day of work might entail, how he snags a table at the most in-demand restaurant at the last minute, and what it’s like when your boss has never heard the word “no.”

[–] [email protected] 45 points 5 days ago (1 children)

terrorism is when the UN provides humanitarian aid to the people you're bombing, starving, and killing in large numbers—definitely not a genocide, folks

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

However, Texas right-wing officials have recently mounted a legal challenge to the federal policy in order to access the private medical records of patients who seek abortion care across state lines. Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading the charge nationally among 18 other attorneys general who signed a formal letter to the health department in opposition to the changes last June. Paxton argues that the new rule—as well as the original HIPAA privacy rules from 2000—limit the state’s authority to conduct investigations.

“The Biden Administration’s motive is clear: to subvert lawful state investigations on issues that the courts have said the states may investigate,” said Paxton in a statement. “The federal government is attempting to undermine Texas’s law enforcement capabilities, and I will not allow this to happen.”

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

It's been just a week since US telecom regulators announced a formal inquiry into broadband data caps, and the docket is filling up with comments from users who say they shouldn't have to pay overage charges for using their Internet service. The docket has about 190 comments so far, nearly all from individual broadband customers.

Federal Communications Commission dockets are usually populated with filings from telecom companies, advocacy groups, and other organizations, but some attract comments from individual users of telecom services. The data cap docket probably won't break any records given that the FCC has fielded many millions of comments on net neutrality, but it currently tops the agency's list of most active proceedings based on the number of filings in the past 30 days.


The FCC will surely hear from many groups with different views on data caps, but Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel seems particularly keen on factoring consumer sentiment into the data-cap proceeding. When it announced the inquiry last week, Rosenworcel's office published 600 consumer complaints about data caps that Internet users recently filed.

"During the last year, nearly 3,000 people have gotten so aggravated by data caps on their Internet service that they have reached out to the Federal Communications Commission to register their frustration," Rosenworcel said last week. "We are listening. Today, we start an inquiry into the state of data caps. We want to shine a light on what they mean for Internet service for consumers across the country."

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

the original post on this subject, if you're curious.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

The complaint, which brings claims for copyright infringement and false endorsement, also names Warner Bros. Discovery for allegedly facilitating the partnership.

"Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk's massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account," states the complaint. "Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk."{/quote]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Lesson 1: Nobody cares.

Initially, I was terrified of judgment. What would my friends think if I didn’t drink? What about a potential partner? Will they think I’m a loser? Wait. Stop. Nobody cares.

This is such a freeing reminder that whether or not you choose to drink, it literally does not matter. Sure, you might encounter 20 seconds of awkward dialogue with a new friend, a coworker, a potential partner, but ultimately, that’s it. Most well-meaning people stop caring very quickly. Which reminds me of one of my favorite facts: nobody is thinking about us as much as we think about ourselves. That’s a good thing.


Lesson 2: If it does matter, that’s not your problem. If someone makes a fuss about your lack of alcohol consumption, that actually has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with them. I know that sounds like a boring modern platitude — “that’s a them problem” — but it’s true. That’s a them problem. I’ve had a date or two who’ve been offended, “slightly confused” as they said, that I agreed to go out on a drinks date when I don’t drink. But just because I don’t drink doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to my fair share of swanky hotel lobbies and fancy glassware! This leads me to my next lesson…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

the good news: the Texas Supreme Court just halted his execution, so hopefully it's the beginning of getting this whole case overturned

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 weeks ago

the only reason this is being kept up and locked and not deleted is to make it clear where Beehaw stands on Richard Stallman, which is: stop defending him, he is an awful person and he completely deserves to be put over the fire for his words and actions.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

who knew that removing the block feature and "Twitter's new ToS says all disputes will be heard in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas located in Tarrant County (Tesla investor Reed O'Connor's court)" were not going to be winners among the remaining userbase

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

This is pre-internet history, and I’m unable to find references, but when the company went out of business the rumor going around was that power companies were funding zoning lawsuits against Copper Cricket, and this eventually shut the company down.

sounds very plausible--zoning is awful and a perfect place to do concern trolling bullshit like that if you know your way around what's allowed and what's not.

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