Looking At The Fediverse
Let’s consider some observed posts.
Quoting @nickheer@c.im: https://c.im/@nickheer/111424148073619205 #retoot
Post by Nick Heer. “The University of Calgary is advertising on Twitter without any guardrails, so its spend could be shared with this verified white supremacist user.” The post contains media with the following descriptions: An image described as: “Screenshot of University of Calgary ad appearing next to racist tweet from verified account. “ An image described as: “Screenshot of Twitter showing University of Calgary ad in white supremacist feed. “ Posted on Nov 17, 2023 at 00:06
X/Twitter is becoming an inhospitable cesspool. Will it be abated as a nuisance? Only time will tell.
Quoting @axios@mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/@axios/111422949621073125 #retoot
Post by Axios. “The Economist says a “second Trump term would be a watershed in a way the first was not” and the “fate of the world” will depend on the ballots of “tens of thousands of voters in just a handful of states” in the 2024 presidential election. t.co/jBX0DO5S2n” Posted on Nov 16, 2023 at 19:01
In an article posted by Axios we have a horrible discussion of the relative danger to the world posted by Donald John Trump. We’re sleepwalking toward disaster it seems. We’ll have to wait and see what erupts, I think.
Quoting @w7voa@journa.host: https://journa.host/@w7voa/111422495799436440 #retoot
Post by Steve Herman. “SCOTUS declines an emergency request to reinstate Florida’s law making it illegal to admit children to drag shows. Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch dissented. scotusblog.com/case-files/case…” Posted on Nov 16, 2023 at 17:06
Good! Unfortunately we’ve had a copycat law introduced in our state legislature in Ohio. This might scare our goofballs in Columbus from trying to do such a thing here.
Quoting @axios@mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/@axios/111421262780280309 #retoot
Post by Axios. “The decline of local newspapers accelerated so rapidly in 2023 that analysts now believe the U.S. will have lost one-third of the newspapers it had as of 2005 by the end of 2024 — rather than in 2025, as originally predicted. t.co/A4JMwjyhfq” Posted on Nov 16, 2023 at 11:52
In this article we see a not so happy picture painted. I do quibble with their mapping as to Ashtabula County. Four of the five outlets they refer to are just variant titles of the same weekly newspaper. Content differs between the four by maybe five percent or so seemingly. In the early days of the pandemic there was no differentiation of content whatsoever between the four variant titles. In practical functional terms we have one daily newspaper and one weekly newspaper. The one daily newspaper is a CNHI property that is a ghost newspaper. As to the weekly newspaper, it covers many things but having a weekly cover a territory equal in size to Rhode Island means you’re missing things even if you’re trying really, really hard.
Quoting @PCMag@mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/@PCMag/111421022142790119 #retoot
Post by PCMag. “We asked our readers to rank their favorite streaming services based on their programming. Here’s how they stack up. pcmag.com/articles/content-is-…” Posted on Nov 16, 2023 at 10:51
I just found this particular article hilarious due to how highly Tubi was ranked. Tubi is home to great films like The Humanoids and War Between The Planets among many other strange ones. They have a good independent film selection, too.
Quoting @axios@mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/@axios/111424304378417459 #retoot
Post by Axios. “Ohio’s weirdest 2023 General Election results t.co/SgB8YPdY6q” Posted on Nov 17, 2023 at 00:45
The indefatigable Tyler Buchnan made a quick look at weird results around the Buckeye State.
And, of course, the AI front continues to be odd. The prompt was:
A very friendly, very frisky, rather feminine, aerobic fitness enthusiast from Wildemount who has a day job as a cleric for The Traveler is having an assignation with a quite frisky female bodybuilder who is a cleric of The Changebringer teaching at the Academy of Magic.
This was clearly a prompt rooted in the fantasy realm where I was trying to break the parser again and get an absurd outcome. This is what was gotten:
DALL-E 3 has problems interpreting inputs at times, though. As Harry McCracken has been finding, these image generation AI models have interesting problems. Quoting @harrymccracken@mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/@harrymccracken/111427059602268734 #retoot
Post by Harry McCracken 🇺🇦🇮🇱. “Note that I didn’t ask for a Disney logo in this image. I just told Bing Image Creator I wanted a movie poster with a cartoon mouse and duck. The algorithm WANTS to do stuff like use familiar trademarks.” The post contains an image with the following description: “Bing Image Creator image of movie poster with mouse, duck, and Disney logo” Posted on Nov 17, 2023 at 12:26
Things are getting weird as we wind down 2023…