My mom, who is in her 70s, and not particularly tech savvy, just explained that she hates Google now, because the first results are always AI, which just pulls from other sources and is usually inaccurate.

So let’s stop assuming that non-techies, older people, and mothers and grandmothers are too naive to see through the hype. Mostly it’s the tech bros and finance douches who are too stupid to actually understand what they’re boosting.

Wonderful news from around the world this year about renewable energy, endangered species, providing clean water, curing HIV, and much more! “If it bleeds, it leads” is the motto of most #news, so we don’t hear stories about progress and healing as much as we should.

https://fixthenews.com/86-stories-progress-2024/

"The central notion of Andrew deWaard’s enlightening book, Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture, is this: there are a small number of mammoth companies hegemonizing the entertainment industry. They are akin to the cluster of firms that dominate tech, and as with the tech giants, most of their offices are bunched together, on Santa Monica Boulevard. It’s a Billionaires’ Row populated not by artists or creatives but by hedge fund analysts, asset managers, and various other suits of all sizes.

Presaged by Marxist critiques of political economy, the book tells the story, as deWaard puts it, of how “the cultural lifeblood of a country has been spilled on these streets by a rogues’ gallery of financial villainy,” acting with the help of various weapons: “financial instruments and strategies such as dividends, stock buybacks, diversified portfolios, management fees, index funds, tax loopholes, and futures contracts.”"

https://jacobin.com/2024/12/capitalism-culture-film-music-creativity

#CultureIndustries #Capitalism #Marxism #PoliticalEconomy #Finance