I was already planning to voice skepticism about Apple partnerships with universities in a manuscript I’m writing, but now I’ve got this to cite as well.

I appreciate Masnick’s roundup of all the stupid things going on re: tariffs.

Well, if he’s going to ruin the economy, at least he can come by his strategy in the dumbest possible way.

I didn’t need to read a printer recommendation article today, but I’m so glad I did. The rage about the world we live in is great.

Studio Ghibli pictures are neat (legitimately! it’s one of the first generative AI things that’s tempted me!), but these deepfakes are the price we pay for them, and I think that’s too high a price.

I think this is a good example of why digital labor is a particularly salient critique of generative AI. Yes, Wikimedia content is licensed, but not as strictly as copyrighted works. Yet, ripping off of their work is arguably worse than grabbing some copyrighted works.

Good—if depressing—article.

Joli, ça !

I skipped over this article the first few times I saw it, but I think there’s some good stuff in here. Is defying Ghibli the point?

Masnick’s writing has never struck me as inflammatory or rushed. If he’s using this language, we should all be worried.

This seems… good? So good that I’m suspicious I’ve missed something.

Generative AI products make me mad, I don’t like them, and I’m not going to defend them. That said, if this gets framed as a copyright problem, is there any way to give Studio Ghibli (or Pixar or the Seuss estate) power to cry foul here that doesn’t also shut down fan art, parodies, and the like? I’m skeptical, and that’s why I think “labor” is the more productive—if more legally ambiguous—framing here.

This is unlikely to make a difference, but I’m grateful anyway.

Word of mouth and website games are exactly what got me to watch Napoleon Dynamite.

This is what my employer cut ties with.

Where does one start with how wild this story is?

50,000 is roughly as much as all students, faculty, and staff at the University of Kentucky. The whole university gone.

Let’s all support the Internet Archive—that goes for you, too, publishers.

What a dumb, petty administration this is.

C’est du n’importe quoi, ça. Quelle honte, ce pays.

On one hand, if the university’s connections are tenuous, I can understand making the easy move to get the administration off our back—especially when I’m confident that UK is pushing back against NIH indirect costs and other issues. On the other, I certainly hope that our response to every attack isn’t going to be to roll over and wash our hands of things.

Surveillance sucks, and here’s the latest example.

I have been meaning for months to embrace Kagi, and this is pushing me further over that edge.

Some good things to think about right here.

Cory Doctorow’s The Bezzle continues to play out in real life.

This weekend, I visited family and complained to myself that their Amazon Fire sticks were emphasizing ad delivery over being a TV. I guess that’s the future for my Roku stick, too? What a sucky future we live in.

The “brute force” metaphor is helpful here, and the article also draws attention to the vulnerability of algorithmic media to generative AI brute forcing.

I’ve been trying to figure out how angry to be about this move from Amazon, and Doctorow’s thinking is helpful: Very angry. (I don’t own and would never own an Echo, but it still makes me mad).

Acknowledging the ambiguity in Musk’s salute is important: not to let him off the hook, but to recognize how much more dangerous things are when they’re ambiguous than when they’re straightforward.

I believe that scraping the internet to profit off of generative AI is ethically problematic BUT I concede that it should be fair use BUT this is still a soulless and terrible argument.

I mean, I’ve always wanted to live and work in France, but I’ve never wanted to feel like I would have to.

Worrying stuff.

If I don’t bookmark this article, I will quickly forget how dumb this whole thing has been (not to mention petty and mean).

Posting this in the interest of fairness, but I’m still not happy with Mozilla right now.

Le sigh.

Laugh to keep from crying.