onfocus

What troubles me most is the disconnect at the ESPN executive level between making money and caring about the human impact of constantly bombarding fans with betting odds and talk. It’s become impossible to escape—during live games, studio shows, podcasts, etc. But just because there aren’t yet laws here banning some of this during live sports broadcasts—as there are in some other countries—doesn’t mean they should be doing it.

I still find this jarring. Funneling everything into gambling just doesn't make any business sense to me. You're going to either turn off or eventually kill off a good percentage of your audience. Seems incredibly short sighted because enough people's lives have been ruined by gambling that we're well aware of the downsides.

Only 15 minutes before President Trump decided not to strike Iranian power plants on March 23, a few traders sank billions of dollars into predicting that the S&P 500 would go up and oil prices would fall, making a hefty profit, Bloomberg reports. The traders reportedly used a two-minute window at 6:49 a.m. that day to make the massive deals in futures markets. 

I hope we can spend the next decade finding every last one of these garbage people and hold them accountable. We need to have some real accountability to make people think twice about this profiteering in the future.

Describing them as “superintelligence” or “rogue models” ascribes agency to products rather than to the companies building them. This framing markets these companies’ products as “superhuman” and, at the same time, helps the companies evade accountability for their actions. 

These companies have gone rogue and don’t feel a responsibility to follow laws. I wish we had a government willing to enforce the laws we already have.

More than 200 people in roles such as engineering, finance, and communications will now be represented by the Communications Workers of America.

Great news, happy for them. Hopefully Wikipedia can continue to be a good example of something that works online.

Apparently DHH’s support for ethnic cleansing is not disqualifying to 1Password.

So tired of these rich fascist tech bros propping each other up. I cancelled my 1Password subscription. Lots of alternatives in the modern era.

“The President is only conceivably harmed by an injunction barring executive action if that court order is preventing him from doing something the law permits him to do,” she wrote. Given that nothing in the Constitution empowers him to prescribe the form of mail-in ballots in California or anywhere, Jackson concluded, the holding in Trump v. California is tantamount to asserting that “the President must be injured whenever he is prevented from doing something as he wishes.”

So grateful Justice Ketanji Brown is on the court and willing to call out her colleagues' corruption. It's not much comfort compared to real justice but at least there's a voice of reason in the record of this completely lawless court. By the way, court reform should be the top topic of discussion for Democrats.

Kasoa is a snapshot of how unplanned urbanization is unfolding in the region. Its population growth is far outpacing the creation of new roads and other public development.

“In Kasoa, things are much easier,” George says, “for now.” The growing influx is slowly driving up prices here too. “Maybe in a few years, we’ll have to move again.”

Not a fan of this scroll-to-view style, but this is some excellent reporting and pictures from a trip along the coast of West Africa.

Residents must decide when to leave, what to take, which route to follow and where to go, often while under intense stress. Research has consistently shown that factors such as risk perception, preparedness, confidence in evacuation plans and familiarity with local routes all influence whether people evacuate early, delay leaving or choose to stay behind.

Some positive news from the Spokane fires. Every community with a similar threat level should be having evacuation drills.

“I don’t really care about those labels nowadays,” Kelly said, when asked about Mamdani being a socialist. “I like that he stands for making sure nobody seems to feel marginalized, like we’re all in this together, we all win together.

“If that’s what socialism is,” she added, “I’m all for it!”

Sounds pretty scary.

Executives that tell the press that their company has gone insane will quickly find themselves removed from their positions. Employees who are honest will find themselves fired in short-order, or “randomly” selected for a round of layoffs. In fact, it is in the interests of almost every actor in the space – boards, executives, employees, vendors, consultants – to obfuscate and misrepresent the success rate of AI projects.

There's a secret underground of AI skeptics and they can't speak up without losing their jobs because the culture is all-in.

As in his previous films, Nolan is interested in the discontinuities of space and time, in magic, tricks, craft, technology, rivalry, substitution, masks, miscommunication, what we remember and what we choose to forget. Yet again, survival is portrayed as a kind of triumph. Yet again, there are long, claustrophobic scenes of drowning and near-drowning, and technically impressive episodes in which buildings are engulfed in flames and vehicles explode. Yet again, we watch a male character’s desperate quest to recover and/or avenge a female love object. I had hoped that Nolan’s affinity with these Homeric themes might push him to new creative heights, and enable him to conjure more believable characters. But The Odyssey features his usual combination of grandiosity and superficiality.

A no-holds-barred review of The Odyssey movie by the woman who translated Homer's epic poem for a modern audience. I enjoyed her translation and the movie and I can see all of her points here. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's a good story.

See also.

Literally a couple months ago Marc Andreessen was on Joe Rogan talking about how these dumb young progressive kids support “socialism” even though “it never works.” Meanwhile, Andreessen was just appointed by Trump to some government policy board. As Trump literally nationalizes parts of the AI industry that Andreessen insisted the prior administration was going to destroy through its woke anti-capitalist policies.

I know it's tired to point out Republican hypocrisy because that's their happy place, but come on. The supposed party of small government is only concerned about the size when the benefits of government are going to people who aren't already wealthy.