onfocus

"Bearing all this in mind, our ancestor from 1791 might well conclude that a legal system crafted to protect life and liberty should readily encompass the value of protecting people from being terrorized by gun-possessors with a propensity to physically harm others."

The ridiculous Federalist Society "mission" of interpreting law through a historic lens is only one narrow, misguided way to interpret history. I think it’s clear by now that this history garbage is obfuscation and their mission is enacting authoritarian policies.

"To reach this extraordinary conclusion, the court engaged in the worst version of Drunk History. It went all the way back to the English Militia Act of 1662 (not a typo) and treated us to a recitation of the king’s prerogatives, James II, and Oliver Cromwell, to conclude that the law’s restriction on “dangerous” individuals was not in line with the thinking of the authors of the US Constitution."

Please vote for Democrats so we can have reasonable gun laws in this country and save people’s lives. Republicans are out of control and nothing will change them but repeatedly losing elections.

"In another example, an ad for the streaming service Peacock appeared next to a tweet from Anthime Gionet, an influencer known as Baked Alaska, who was recently sentenced for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The ad appeared next to a tweet where Gionet asked his followers whether he should “say the n-word.”"

Twitter is toxic for people so it's a toxic place to build brands.

"Over the past two school years, the number of attempts to remove books from schools has skyrocketed to historic highs. Of the thousands of titles targeted, an overwhelming majority were written by or about people of color and LGBTQ individuals, according to the American Library Association and PEN America."

The real cancel culture in America. Feels like governments in many states trying to dismantle or at least diminish the effectiveness of public education.

"But the need for humans to label data for AI systems remains, at least for now. 'They’re impressive, but ChatGPT and other generative models are not magic – they rely on massive supply chains of human labor and scraped data, much of which is unattributed and used without consent,' Andrew Strait, an AI ethicist, recently wrote on Twitter. 'These are serious, foundational problems that I do not see OpenAI addressing.'"

Warning: this article is disturbing. Companies shouldn't be able to cause people psychological damage to get funding.

"To ignore Musk is to sacrifice the precious clicks that a new Musk prediction will inevitably garner. Thus a for-profit tech journalism website faces a conflict between its financial self-interest and its integrity. In a time when it’s tough for media outlets to survive, it’s hard to turn down the clicks."

Good rant. Bullshit pays for the media (among others) but causes significant problems for society. Seems like an intractable problem.

"The rise of services that connect strangers through private messaging has strained the conventional “see something, say something” mantra repeated in the decades since the Columbine High School massacre and other attacks, according to social media researchers. And when strangers do suspect something is wrong, they may feel they have limited ways to respond beyond filing a user report into a corporate abyss."

Centralized social media without strong moderation was a big mistake. The advertising industry needs to force reforms but I’m not optimistic.

"Robbins, who said she lives in California and only ever interacted with Ramos online, told CNN she reported him to Yubo several times and blocked his account, but continued seeing him in livestreams making lewd comments."

We need both online and physical world consequences for threatening behavior online. Services allowing people to repeatedly make threats of physical harm is unethical but it is the status quo for online media.

"But the vote failed along party lines, raising fresh doubts about the possibility of robust debate, let alone eventual compromise, on gun safety measures. The final vote was 47-47, short of the 60 needed to take up the bill. All Republicans voted against it."

This is just your regular reminder to never vote for a Republican even if you'd like to have a beer with them personally. And you shouldn't have a beer with them either. Shun the death cult.

"Ultimately, all the evidence suggests that Justice Alito is not the even-tempered judge he presented to the Senate in 2005. He’s not a person concerned with hearing and weighing all the arguments. He’s the fervent conservative activist who applied to Ronald Reagan’s DOJ and wrote the words set out below, and he always has been. Justice Alito told the truth seeking that DOJ position, and he lied to get the Supreme Court seat he now holds."

All of the Supreme Court justices who rule in favor of criminalizing abortion will have lied in their senate confirmations. When they do they should be impeached.

I'm so tired of hearing about crypto scams. This video takes the time to explain why that world of NFTs and crypto is such a wretched hive of scum and villainy. This explainer is well done and worth the time and I hope it can help our collective consciousness move on.

See also: David Rosenthal’s EE380 Talk

"A Substack spokesperson referred the Guardian to an essay published on Wednesday by the platform’s co-founders, Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi, in which they said silencing vaccine sceptics would not work. “As we face growing pressure to censor content published on Substack that to some seems dubious or objectionable, our answer remains the same: we make decisions based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation,” they said."

Translation: we at Substack make too much money to be responsible citizens. Let's see how this 'hands off' approach works out for them.