A few years ago, I spent a while doing research that brushed up against how the gambling lobby was chipping away at advertising barriers. The apparent end goal: to get their ads in front of teen boys.
I’m pretty jaded when it comes to corp shenanigans, but man, I slept poorly on those nights.
Yeah, the rest of us are more afraid of the teens than they are of anything else on the subway.
They know they fucked up, but they still see a solid chance they can brazen through this. That some Elon ex machina will swoop in and make all this go away, or a Trump pardon.
And why would they think otherwise? This demographic believe getting bailed out at the last minute is a natural law.
Bet they pulled some shiny data analysis though! Ah, who needs humans anyway.
Get paid half the fee up front, or set a retainer. Once you get through your intro slides and they realize you’re not going to be telling them what they want, they get real tetchy about whether the final deliverable fits the contracted expectation, and withhold payment.
Orange book cover with a sketch of the back of a man. He is wearing a boxy blue blazer with epaulettes. He may have a feather stuck in his hair. What is visible of the hair is combed over; what is visible of the hand is short-fingered and vulgarian. "Hysterical" - Eric Idle "An essential American satire” - Tommy Orange The Captain and the Glory Dave Eggers
In honor of the Strait of Hormuz, time to crack open this one again.
They are going to keep trying to avoid talking to people and raw data their way through this until doomsday.
They all think they’ve found the secret to never having to recruit, show interest in, and converse with a real user (who they fundamentally dislike for being “stupid”) again.
Oh cool they built a machine that tells other techbros what they want to hear, then let the bros pick from an assortment of fake humans to be ventriloquist data dummy.
[screams in ethnographic researcher]
Ah yes, the demographic famously known for noticing and correctly interpreting human behavior: teenagers.
The “old books” are the sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks he first read at 13 and didn’t understand, but thought he did and those misunderstandings formed his entire worldview, and now he’s pulling those books off the shelf to fail to understand them all over again.
The high-level corporate freak has been seduced by the siren song of data science, believes the more data the better, and sees absolutely no cost to collecting that data at every turn.
They then reverse-engineer the data analysis to say what they believe. That’s why they like it so much.
That’s the great thing about me telling you up front that I won’t engage beyond providing a link to Trump tearing up an existing nuclear deal with Iran - it’s choose your own adventure!
Whatever tangent you pick, I’m not coming along for the ride! But have fun?
I once got a room in Mexico that was underground and windowless and had a shallow, 1-foot high stage running across the wall on one end. The stage wall had some sort of pastoral scene painted on it and velvet curtains draped about 6” in advance of the wall.
I think about that room a lot.
I have a point, but I also have extensive exposure to both online community moderation AND various AI chatbot patterns, which have provided immunity to certain conversational gambits.
Also you don’t seem to know there are two very different versions of The Office.
Heavens no, I don’t provide free bespoke tutorials on the internet. Enlightenment is at your fingertips, go forth and learn. I believe in you.
We’re exhausted all the time. We keep waking up and finding out he’s attacked another country or state. We keep having to watch the news show deference to his cabinet like they’re normal people. He steals from us and there seems to be nothing that will stop him.
Constant cognitive dissonance.
I have gone to great lengths to Battlestar Galactica my digital life away from the rest of humanity.
👆Thiiiiiiiis. He’s specifically targeting those friggin’ straw-users! You know, those people who voluntarily suck on a cylinder instead of chewing on the side of a styrofoam cup like God and Sister Agnes intended!
Now, off for a smoke.
He’s worried about the wrong additives. The secret ingredient is some sort of patented anitfreeze that makes MA residents impervious to cold. How do they think we’ve been shoveling in our shorts without coats for the last month.
Also we will kill to maintain access. So.
Those who did not learn the lesson of taxing New England’s beverage of choice are doomed to repeat it
Oh, DO IT. The modern-day minutemen have been out for the past two months clearing sidewalks in shorts while pausing to sip their iced Dunkin’.
He might as well announce a ban on orange striped straws, then just throw himself directly into the Harbor. Faster.
Screenshot from linked substack article stating: This piece is inspired by a wave of recent Al-related writing from people I respect: Dan Williams, Alex Imas, Ben Ansell, Tibor Rutar, scott cunningham, Kevin Munger, Hollis Robbins, Claude (yes!) Blattman, Kevin Bryan, Andy Hall, Kelsey Piper, Sean Westwood, and many others. So here, I'm continuing the tradition of writing the takes that are upsetting but needed.
So. If, of your 12 AI thought leaders, only one is a woman… I would encourage you to wonder why that is.
I would also encourage you to discuss AI with female designers & researchers, find out why they’re so underrepresented in the AI Future Chorus.
Maybe ask why they’re not singing along.
It feels like a lot of society is microdosing “Jackass” - doing little hits of obviously stupid insanity to chase the thrill of getting away with it anyway.
Anyway, it’s been a couple decades, I’m sure all of the original Jackass cast are fine.
GOOD.
Every time I see a new one of these I wonder again: how flammable is that material?
The final panel of “Get Your War On”, a really good clipart comic strip of office workers reacting to Bush’s Iraq war. Three comic panels on a white background with red line-drawings. Panels 1 and 3 show an old desktop computer monitor and keyboard. Panel 2 shows a stack of binders. Recurring characters Accounts Payable and Account Receivable usually sit here, but they’re absent in this final comic, either because the war’s over or they’ve just had it with this fucking shit. I’m choosing to pick the latter. I am not fucking doing “Get Your War On” again, twenty years later. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKERS. Comic available here: http://www.mnftiu.cc/category/gywo/war81/
The only people who should remain on X are a loose affiliation of Grok-whisperers, who feed these prompts to Grok 24/7.
They may not listen to “libs”, but they’ll listen to Grok. Or they’ll turn against Grok. Win/win.
This energy, all the time, to get elected in coming cycles.
* My First Most Difficult Aunt is actually my uncle, who we routinely refer to as “Aunt Agatha”, Wodehouse-style.
