“The MAGA party is the last breath of the Confederacy,” he told lawmakers. “If y’all could give us less than zero seats, you would do it.”

“There will be no more of your party,” he said. “The midterms gonna come, y’all gonna get wiped out,”
A #Louisiana resident who identified himself as Marshawn delivers a fiery, emotional speech to lawmakers during a state Senate hearing over redistricting Monday, accusing GOP of trying to “cheat” Black voters out of political power
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P58otkVgZ2U

Why can writers not seem to quit Substack? Maggie Mertens writes for the Scratch newsletter (hosted and distributed on @ghost) about why she and others feel locked in to the problematic platform, and talks to some who have successfully switched.

https://flip.it/n1vmvC

#Newsletters #Writing #Media #Journalism

What do you call the people from various US states?

by instagram user: @the.world.in.maps
https://www.instagram.com/p/DLFWYnOotCN/

I am fundamentally against AI, not because I am technophobic or anti-progress. I am no Luddite. I am quite often a first adopter of new tech. I am against AI because I can recognize a con when I see one. And we are living in the Golden Age of Con Artists.

We are being sold snake oil and told it is a panacea for all that ails us. We are being sold a deed to the Golden Gate Bridge and told it will only cost us the price of a sandwich.

People love being told they're right about things, and hate being told they're wrong. People love things that are inexpensive and hate things that are costly. People love things that are instant gratification and hate having to wait.

Actual subject matter experts are: costly, time consuming, and often tell you when you're dead wrong about something. AI is everything an expert isn't. It's cheap to use, gives results in an instant, and always tells you you're right. That's not an expert. That's a grift.

The past week of MAGA regret is what happens when an entire nation of people suddenly runs face first into the reality that they have allowed themselves to be in a parasocial relationship with a violent, deranged, narcissistic sociopath who no longer requires their support in order to retain power, and can therefore be discarded like the trash he has always viewed them.

The pundits are going crazy trying to figure out "why now?" What makes his current batshit deranged mania a step too far for his supporters? What's different about the recent sociopathic attacks on the Pope versus his sociopathic attacks on women and children? What's so different about the recent deranged AI photo he posted of himself as Jesus Christ versus the deranged AI photos he posted of the Obamas as monkeys? What's so damn different about the violent debacle in the Strait of Hormuz versus the violent debacle over the ICE murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good?

Let me answer that for you. What's different is it's happening TO THEM now. Trump's deranged, narcissistic violence is finally, and in measurable ways, HARMING THEM. That isn't a change in Trump. That's not a sign of disease, or onset of dementia. The only thing that's changed is the fact that Donald Trump, violent, deranged narcissistic sociopath that he's always been, no longer requires the support of his base to stay in power. And that makes them disposable.

There's this weird trend I've noticed among large corporations with a strong public-facing line of business. And that is a very strange attitude toward customer interaction - treating it as some kind of chore or drain on their bottom line instead of their core method of earning profit. And this is a fairly recent development too. Some time in the last 5-10 years it's as if businesses started feeling weirdly offended every time they needed to engage directly in customer interaction, instead of identifying that interaction as a core component of the value of their business.

This is, I think, the core emotion currently driving the A.I. bubble. Not greed. Not fear. Not lack of empathy. But laziness. The desire to simply reach into a customer's pocket and extract cash without the need for all that messy and icky "talking to the customer" bullshit.

As the Director and founder of PlayLoveLearn, my company will never do that. Not just because it's the right thing to do. But also, just as in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king, in the age of A.I., human interaction is a luxury service.