I missed the detail about Disney+ using some of the Sora output, and that makes this whole thing even more about labor exploitation.

I disagree with the copyright framing here (it’s a labor issue), but otherwise, I think this is a good take.

Involving Disney, who infamously stiffed Alan Dean Foster on Star Wars royalties, so clearly demonstrates how the underlying issue with generative AI isn’t copyright, it’s labor.

Fascinating read! I’m not as interested as the author in his largely geopolitical thesis, but the raw materials he uses to construct that thesis are depressingly fascinating. They could also make up the elements of an Ellulian thesis on the dangers of power, efficiency, and technical systems. It’s harder to use Apple products after reading the book—and it’s a stark reminder of how the world we live in is so different than the world I’d like us to.

Oof, what a read.

Cory Doctorow recently reviewed a newer book from Lubchansky, which I’d love to read. I can’t easily get a copy, though, so I checked this one out again from the library. It is bonkers and beautiful, and there should be more comics like it.

I think this is dumb, I feel strongly that “Mormonism” is larger than LDS institutions, and I’m pleased that the EFF has weighed in on this.

ProPublica does good work, and I haven’t been reading enough of them lately.

That this article talks up (and uncritically repeats) purported advantages of surveillance and only briefly acknowledges privacy concerns is a real failure. Reporting needs to do better so that we can walk back surveillance instead of sleepwalk into more of it. Gift link

Wow, wow, wow. I was intrigued by what I knew about this book when I first bought it but am only now getting to it, five years later. It’s a beautiful book and quietly radical, using the story of Mormon to develop a theology of the world ending around us. Miller explicitly invokes the climate crisis at the end of the book and calls for disciples to be willing to sacrifice all things instead of simply waiting to lose all things. Even outside of that context, Miller’s quasi-mystical reading of Mormon has so much to offer—and is pleasantly aligned with some of the theologies I’ve heard in Community of Christ. This is a good one.

Are we willing to pay this price in order to have some neat image generation tools? (I’m not.)

Wait what

Surely Elon “assassination coordinates” Musk is outraged that his own AI would do this. Right?

Things are piling up for Hegseth.

Very helpful context—especially as I consider writing a paper on Grokipedia.

Bookmarking this so that I can return to it and quote the man verbatim when necessary. Gift link.

Good on the publisher, and what a dumb world we live in. Also, “narco terrorist” reminds me of the poli sci class I had where we spent an entire day (week?) talking about the difficulty of clearly defining terrorism. It was mostly an abstract conversation, even with a GWOT backdrop, but I feel like it was preparing me to detect nonsense from this DoD.

Flock continues to suck.

J’écoute souvent Les Cowboys Fringants, et j’ai déjà écrit au sujet de combien je trouve de l’importance dans les paroles de leurs chansons. En plus, il m’arrive souvent de critiquer le « Black Friday » et toutes les façons dont on gâche le week-end de Thanksgiving avec le commercialisme (s’il n’est pas déjà gâché par les mythes colonialistes qu’on lui attribue, bien sûr).

Pourtant, j’ai été étonné ce week-end par combien la chanson « L’Amérique pleure » semblait évoquer directement le Black Friday et tous les problèmes de la culture américaine auxquels je suis particulièrement sensible pendant le Thanksgiving. Les personnes qui doivent travailler pendant les fêtes pour permettre aux autres de fêter (tiens, on pourrait invoquer aussi « Santé » de Stromae), les « excès de [notre] époque », les bouchons sur les autoroutes, et ainsi de suite. En voici la vidéo :

Powerful read on the need for (and absence of) hope this Advent for immigrant Christians.

This book starts off strong, with a very interesting exploration of Christology in the Book of Mormon. There are some other interesting observations, too (including a frank-to-the-point-of-productive-discomfort evaluation of race in the Book of Mormon). If I were only reading the conclusion, I’d likely give it full marks. A few things keep me from doing that for the book as I read it, though.

I admit that some of those things are entirely my fault. As with the last two books in the series, I’ve read this one too quickly to appreciate the arguments it’s making. Furthermore, I confess that I have personal biases against a couple of the authors cited even though I don’t know much about those authors—it’s the laziest kind of bias, and while I might still dislike those authors after a thorough evaluation of their work, it’s not solid ground for grumping about their appearance in this book.

If one idea from Ellul has made the most impact on me, it’s his fierce criticism of attitudes of inevitability.

Some real cathartic rage in here.

This book is great: its emphasis on sight and invisibility, its meta-emphasis on self-evaluation and self-deception, and its leaning into the Book of Mormon’s condemnation of wealth and departure from contemporary Latter-day Saint understandings. So much good stuff in here. The only thing keeping me from giving full marks is that I’ve skimmed it too quickly to critically evaluate (or appreciate) the throughlines of the book.

I genuinely don’t know what legal liability for generative AI products should look like, but arguing that the onus was on the kid and his family because of TOS strikes me as incredibly shitty, not to mention falling back on “look, we have a mission to benefit humanity by building AI, have you taken that into account?”