Yeah, it’s rather exhausting to hunt down information about some of these things. Like, I can usually find info on who owns a news site, but sometimes I don’t have the context to know if they’ve been doing shady shit. Keeping track of things is (purposefully) difficult. Like, I found this resource but it is out of date. I am using ublocklist to slowly add to a list of news sites to make it so that I check them as I see them. If anything comes of that, I’ll post here or something?

Trying to balance gathering online resources and personal stuff. Working on being a more positive influence in discussions I have online, which is draining.

Do we have any good resources on what isn’t in this situation. My current research is turning up very little that doesn’t suffer from this problem- I think all I have right now is AP.

After doing some cursory research, I’ve identified uBlacklist as a potential tool for curating your search results. I have seen some reassuring things about it. If anyone else has suggestions or comments, they are welcome.

Wanted to add to this as well: In 20 US states, the minimum wage is 7.25 an hour. If someone is working minimum wage, this represents almost three weeks of work- more, because of income taxes. It would represent the consumption of, like, 20% of your gross income?

So that’s going to kill people, either directly or by overwork.

The source for the data is from the Tax Foundation, which is ostensibly non-partisan, but their president and CEO worked as policy staff for three different Republicans, so YMMV.

Time to find more tools to blacklist specific news sites.

Those are only conflicting statements if you believe that the market will not embrace worse products. It totally will so long as you have a group of people who lack the critical analysis skills to compare the products and arrive at the conclusion that the new one is worse.

It doesn’t help that the potential drivers of this action are massive conglomerates, so if a sweeping change comes from the top-down and is paired with a lot of propaganda (Marketing) then people will have no choice but to accept it as the standard.

I think that a lot of criticism about the actual quality of AI art is mixed, though. I feel like it has flaws, but I’ve seen arguments about flaws I don’t think are actually real problems with the technical quality.

Hey, I wanted to say I’m sorry for using ambiguous language there. My time studying history has profoundly affected me, so I tend to use “Opinion” to mean “What’s your understanding and reasoned analysis of X thing?”

The alternate implications slipped my mind when I posted. My bad!

I wanted to say thanks for sharing your thoughts and I think we’re actually on the same page with regards to current AI technology. I do recognize that a lot of people are interested in using it, and that they will continue to highly value the functionality it has. My objections to it are, of course, related to secondary concerns and problematic social issues- which I think you understand based on your post.

Hey! Are you up to talking about your opinions on the value of current AI technology? I’m personally opposed due to how our society has chosen to organize itself, but I think the basic concept is interesting.

Totally agree! It’s not even on the article’s list of things to be concerned about.

Bill proposed by Senator Cassidy, and cosponsored by Cruz and Loeffler, what a surprise. Link to Bill

Fighting hypervilgilance that wants me to keep track of all the new everywhere all the time, since I know that I’m as safe as I can be in the US and if something big happens I have lots of channels of information to find out about it. Just need to focus on my life and the little joys I can have, like making a cup of tea and enjoying this absurd song I heard that’s kind of a dance club remix of a synthetic voice reading PR stuff about queer people? It’s honestly great.

I feel you. This isn’t the life we should have had, and it’s deeply unfair that we have to live in it. I’m also just trying to live each day. <3

Thanks for sharing this. I always appreciate a well-cited piece of folklore, and especially since you went through the effort of translating it.

I especially enjoyed the calm familiarity of the priest. I’ve been reading up on renaissance magic and the presence of clergy is prominent, so it is personally amusing.

What an interesting and novel way of presenting this information. It’s interesting that the Will O’ Wisp stories all cluster, while the others are much more spread out.

My bingo-board didn’t have, “replacing actual research with a liar-box,” but here we are. I’ve noticed, to my increasing discomfort, trends with using ChatGPT (and similar) to replace actual research into topics, or people using them to “summarize” articles. As someone with actual research training it’s pretty alarming to realize how little people understand about what research is.

I’ve seen how badly these things mangle my area of academic interest, because they can’t write reasonable citations.

I’m focusing on myself right now. I know that my difficulties with executive function make it hard to accomplish a lot of things my values would require of me, so I’m trying to focus on self-care as defiance. Being trans, alive and happy is a small victory in itself.

That’s really rough. I know how much it can grind you down to be rejected again and again like that. My heart goes out to you and I wish you the best, human to human.

I agree with your assessment and relate to the experience of suddenly finding your body is crying out with needs. I have often got really into something and then came out of it dry-mouthed, tired, cold and in desperate need of a stretch and bathroom break.

Sleeping is a welcome relief sometimes. I often find it helps when I’m feeling really burnt out, because that’s often a sign (for me) of overfull mental RAM. I’ve got to many things queued up and they need to be dropped, but it’s impossible to do that without the almighty resetting power of full unconsciousness.

I have been trying out some things recommended by my therapist- namely, trying to use my experience with writing and roleplaying to create opportunities for my subconscious thoughts to be expressed. Mostly this means mentally writing dialogue about something important and letting whatever immediately comes to mind fill out one half of it. It’s been kind of helpful for regulating my emotions and coping with rejection dysphoria.

Thanks for this post, it was nice to read.