Wednesday Wonderings 10.18.23 - Dismal Chaos

AI-as-Stereotypes, Immortality Skepticism, and your Digital Afterlife

October 18, 2023

There’s a new Pepper in town, Americans believe in Sasquatch at triple the rate they believe in the government, Europeans love cheap Chinese EVs, and the Tet Offensive is a useful metaphor for thinking about Israel Palestine.

House GOP in total chaos: So much for fascist order and discipline! (Slate) As this went to press, Jim “Hands Over Eyes” Jordan had just lost his second vote for House speaker. Which, couldn’t happen to a nicer group, if I’m being honest.

Chart shows broad public support for term limits for Congress, age limits for federal elected officials and Supreme Court

Americans’ Dismal Views of the Nation’s Politics (Pew Research Center) If you’re exhausted by politics, 65% of the country agrees with you. Only 4% of those polled believe in our political system to the point where they say it’s working “extremely well.” Which is an amazing stat when you remember 13% of Americans believe in Sasquatch/Big Foot. How much our gov’t sucks is one of the things we agree about.

 'We don't wear that in this country': Man punches Sikh teen in turban on NYC bus in suspected hate crime (NBCNews) & A 6-year-old Palestinian-American was stabbed 26 times for being Muslim, police say. (CNN) After 9/11, Arabs, Muslims, Sikhs, and South Asians were rolled into one “threat level brown” bucket. Thousands of Muslims & Muslim-looking American citizens were attacked, harassed, and monitored. And it’s happening again, with a landlord stabbing a 6 year old Palestinian kid & his mom, an act Joseph Czuba’s prosecutors directly attribute to conservative talk radio.

Europe is looking to fight the flood of Chinese electric vehicles. But Europeans love them (AP) EU leaders are racing to protect car manufacturing jobs within their borders. Unfortunately, no amount of gov’t protections and union swagger will keep EU citizens from choosing feature-rich, affordable EVs over their domestic equivalents. I wonder what the EV equivalent of the Honda Civic or Toyota Camry will be.

Social media traffic to top news sites craters (Axios) & Social internet is dead. Get Over It. (Om) More and more are starting to cover the death of the social web, but we did it in the coolest way of course. Musk choking out social traffic to “fake news” sites is expected, but Meta is doing it as well. This total destruction of value for certain brands is being noticed by marketing agencies, with only 50% buying ads on Meta vs. 81% having bought them last year. 

Why The Washington Post is reducing its staff (Poynter) The flip side of this coin, chasing the subscription model, paywalling content and trying to force user behavior has failed WP comprehensively. The content isn’t worth paying for, and since aggressive paywall enforcement ensures nothing can be shared to, no one will change their mind and subscribe.

Israel’s Tet Moment (Ettingermentum) & Have We Learned Nothing (N+1) Many out there have said anything I could say better than I ever could, so instead of listening to me blabber, read David Klion’s piece in N+1. Switching from a cultural to tactical perspective, the metaphor that this is Israel’s Tet Offensive moment (from the Vietnam War) might be more useful than 9/11:

Just like how America was not on the verge of victory in Vietnam in 1967, Netanyahu’s strategy of low-cost, perpetual occupation was not a permanent security solution for Israel. And to be clear: I’m bringing up Israeli security as the issue not because it is the most important thing here, but because it was the sole purpose and justification of their entire regime of occupation. This regime was perfected to the maximum possible extent. You cannot starve off, spy on, and bomb a place any more effectively than Israel had been doing to Gaza over the past decade. Now, all of this has been proven to be completely ineffective in actually making Israel secure from attacks. Making this clear was Hamas’ main goal—they’ve outright said as such—and they’ve succeeded in it. Like the Americans after Tet, the security that Israel thought it had is gone. The issue they thought they could ignore has proven to be unignorable. They’ll try any number of short term solutions now, from leveling Gaza to outright invading it to everything in between. It won’t get them their all-important sense of safety back. No matter what happens, they will have to adjust.

How AI reduces the world to stereotypes (Rest of World) RoW submitted prompts for people of various ethnicities, and locales across the globe. The AI generated images were about as lazy, uninventive, and about as racist/stereotypical as you’re probably imagining. Zapp doesn’t exactly think non-stereotypically. 

The Creepy New Digital Afterlife Industry (IEEE Spectrum) Our “Digital Afterlife” is something that desperately needs to be protected. It’s not just Tupac who needs his holographic rights secured, its your grandmother’s voice or your dad’s posture. All of this is up for profit if we don’t protect it.

The Longevity Skeptic (Nautilus) A few wealthy colleagues have sent me cryogenics, diet, fitness, and other longevity hacks & gimmicks. It was all just that, gimmicks. If there really was an immortality or longevity hack, the rich would already have it and we’d call them elves.

Quote of the week

Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive. ~Nietzsche

Poem of the week

Vibe of the week

Who remembers Disclosure? Lumine brings it out of retirement with a shimmering, rehydrated garage house track. Get into it and get out there.

Keep your head up,T