onfocus

LAION-5B is an open-source foundation dataset used to train AI models such as Stable Diffusion. It contains 5.8 billion image and text pairs—a size too large to make sense of. In this visual investigation, we follow the construction of the dataset to better understand its contents, implications and entanglements.

An exercise in (and advocacy for) AI dataset transparency. Excellent information and presentation here.

All of the major tech companies conducting another wave of layoffs this year are sitting atop mountains of cash and are wildly profitable, so the job-shedding is far from a matter of necessity or survival.

Short term stock boost is more important than people. Thanks, job creators!

Doctors who are found guilty of providing an abortion in violation of the bans can face up to 99 years in prison, a minimum of $100,000 in fines, and the loss of their medical license.

Just straight up evil behavior happening in Texas and other places that have outlawed reproductive care for women. I’m not sure how health care workers can navigate this ethically and they should never have been put in this position.

Thomas wrote a landmark Supreme Court opinion upholding the doctrine in 2005, but began questioning it a decade later, before eventually renouncing his past opinion in 2020 and claiming that the doctrine itself might be unconstitutional. Now, Thomas could help overturn the doctrine in a new case the high court just agreed to hear next term.

Corrupt court. You can put a price tag on overturning precedents. Happy to hear Ron Wyden is working on accountability but I’m skeptical there will ever be consequences.

The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

Corrupt court. We’re just going to keep doing these until someone does something I guess?

“The most reasonable interpretation of the statute is that this was a gift to Thomas and thus had to be reported. It’s common sense,” said Kathleen Clark, an ethics law expert at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s all to the financial benefit of Clarence Thomas.”

Corrupt court. This level of corruption is unacceptable. They’re not royalty, this is a democracy. We need accountability.

New documents reveal Jane Roberts made $10.3 million from elite firms, raising questions about the Supreme Court justices' conflicts of interest.

Corrupt court. No wonder Chief Justice Roberts hasn’t done a damn thing to reign in ethics violations.

Nine days after he was confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, the then-circuit court judge got one: The chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s biggest law firms with a robust practice before the high court. Gorsuch owned the property with two other individuals.

Corrupt court. It's amazing that these ethics disclosure forms are so confusing to supreme court justices. I thought they were our best legal minds. Also amazing, the purchaser "...has been involved in at least 22 cases before or presented to the court, according to a POLITICO review of the court’s docket." WTAF?

All of the legal documents were pretty clear that Bed Bath was raising money by selling stock to retail investors, that it was handing that money directly to its creditors, that the money probably wouldn’t be enough, that Bed Bath was probably going bankrupt, and that when it did the stock that it had just sold to those retail investors would be worthless. And things have worked out exactly as promised. No one can be surprised!

Job creators!

Powered by returning companies, RAGA revenues in 2022 jumped 68%, reaching $21.6 million. The group used some of its funds to boost midterm candidates who pushed the lies that Trump won in 2020 and that the voting system is rife with fraud.

Corporations will not provide the accountability democracy needs to survive. See also: Dominion settlement with Fox which is good for Dominion but bad for democracy. We need a public system of accountability. Maybe we could call it a Justice Department if we had one.

Crow has never personally come before the supreme court, and denies ever trying to influence Thomas on any legal or political issue. But he has served on the boards of at least three conservative groups that have lobbied the supreme court through amicus briefs.

Corrupt court. As more connections are revealed it becomes more ridiculous that there’s no accountability. Is it really a scandal if no one changes their behavior and there aren’t any consequences?

During a Q&A session held on the Warner Bros. Burbank studio immediately after the conference, Max and HBO Content Head Casey Bloys declined to answer a question from a reporter regarding Rowling’s controversial reputation and how it might affect the show.

“No, I don’t think this is the forum,” Bloys said during the Q&A. “That’s a very online conversation, very nuanced and complicated and not something we’re going to get into.”

It is not nuanced. They're doing business with someone who thinks trans people shouldn't exist. Time to cancel my HBO Max subscription.

Update (4/21): If you're saying to yourself, 'what's wrong with JKR?', ContraPoints posted an amazing summary with historical context: The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.