gru:Bz
Average millennial living life on the edge (of the Midwest). Probably too immature for Micro.blog but I like it here.
Link
The majority of news influencers are conservative men, study finds
This morning, The Pew Research Center…published a deep 122 page report that found that the news influencer landscape skews male and leans disproportionately conservative, creating a concerning imbalance in our online news landscape that could ultimately have profound political consequences.
I find the whole influencer thing pretty wack to begin with but we do need more liberals in the space. And women. We need fucking crazy leftist conspiracy theorists actually. Clearly there’s a market for it.
Scientists Discover ‘Immortal’ Marine Creature That Can ‘Time Travel’
I’ve been a broken record on the sea aliens lately but this is pretty cool, and actually real.
Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament are now free on the Internet Archive
An Epic spokesperson subsequently confirmed that it has given the green light for the games to be hosted on the Internet Archive, telling PC Gamer, “We can confirm that Unreal 1 and Unreal Tournament are available on archive.org and people are free to independently link to and play these versions.”
Finally some not terrible news relating to the Internet Archive! I was OBSESSED with UT ‘99 on the Dreamcast back in the day. Happy to see another classic saved from falling into complete obscurity.
Mountain lions in Los Angeles become night owls to avoid humans
Not a bad idea, honestly…
Bluesky feels more like old Twitter than X does
I’ll go as far as saying it feels more like original Twitter than Mastodon, too. I don’t know what it is, like I was on mastodon for two years before Bluesky came out and I had already built a pretty nice little community over there. But Bluesky somehow feels more welcoming. Or at least it feels more like what I remember about Twitter circa 2013 when I was still having fun.
I like that both Mastodon and Bsky are mostly made up of regular every day people. They’re both decentralized, which is a plus. Though I never really put any thought into that before I learned what it meant through using Mastodon.
But one big thing I missed about Classic™ Twitter was realtime updates. Everything from news to celebrities - without radical far right crypto bro influencers sprinkled in. Maybe that’s what I like; influencers aren’t really a thing on Bluesky and there’s no MAGA nonsense. It’s like Twitter pre-Elon and pre-crypto.
Here’s Why I Decided To Buy ‘InfoWars’ - The Onion
This is perfect. InfoWars makes much more sense as satire.
Mark ‘Z-Pain’ Zuckerberg did a cover of ‘Get Low.’
I may be scarred for life after hearing Zuckerberg’s autotuned voice serenade me with “‘Til the sweat drop down my balls.”
“‘Get Low’ was playing when I first met Priscilla at a college party, so every year we listen to it on our dating anniversary,” Zuckerberg wrote on Instagram. “This year I worked with @tpain on our own version of this lyrical masterpiece…"
We are undoubtedly living in the Bad Place.
Perplexity brings ads to its platform
Enshittification ensues
This is what natural selection looks like in the age of gen AI
Daring Fireball: 1Password: The Infinite Loop of Security
The 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that “the human element” (accidental breaches caused by human error, or victimization in phishing attacks and the like) was the number one cause of breaches. The same was true last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.
it’ll never happen to me…
I used the same weak ass password for hundreds of accounts. I ignorantly took the position of “I don’t have anything worth hacking so using the same password everywhere is fine.”
I sure fucked around and found out on that one.
A couple years ago I found myself in the middle of a shitstorm of hacked accounts after I fell for a phishing thing. I immediately switched from Windows 11 to Linux and spent almost two full days updating hundreds of logins with unique, random 20+ character passwords using 1Password. The damage was already done though. Or at least it was off to a pretty good head start.
I lost an entire Facebook account, my PayPal and Cashapp were compromised and I’m pretty sure they straight up cloned my browser because I was getting login attempts across a lot of different accounts for DAYS after that. Even things that had 2FA enabled. I have no idea how that’s even possible but they got in there.
I don’t like to advocate for specific brands here but 1Password has been a godsend. It’s worth the small yearly fee. Even if you don’t go with them, you need a password manager. Every time I’ve been fucked over with phishing or hacked accounts it was my fault; human error or maybe even just arrogance and being too loosey goosey with online security.
Election Conspiracy Theories Are for Everyone
In the days following Donald Trump’s clear win, conspiracy theories about how votes were tampered with or how the election was stolen from Kamala Harris have spread on the left, with viral tweets, TikTok videos, and posts on Threads making a chaotic and spotty case alleging a fishy result.
Maybe we need some zany conspiracy theorists on the left. It works out pretty favorable for the MAGA people anyway. Maybe we’ve just been playing it too clean and… sane.
Beatles' ‘Now and Then’ Makes History As First AI-Assisted Song To Earn Grammy Nomination
many fans assumed that the remaining Fab Four members…must have used generative AI to deepfake the late John Lennon. That was not actually the case. Instead, the Beatles used a form of AI known as “stem separation” to help them clean up a 60-year-old, low-fidelity demo recorded by Lennon
At first glance I thought this was a dumb headline about some gen AI songbot trained on Lennon’s voice. This actually makes sense though! Would love to see more old gems cleaned up to studio quality.
Your Standing Desk Might Actually Be as Bad as Sitting All Day
…a new study from researchers in Australia and the Netherlands has found standing for long periods of time might not be much better than sitting after all – and actually comes with its own life-threatening risks.
Ahmadi says the real take-home from this research is that standing, by itself, should not be considered a cure-all for the ailments of sedentary, seat-bound lifestyles.
Who keeps increasing the difficulty 🥴
How to work at McDonald’s and still become a millionaire
“Every dollar I get, I’m taking some of that money and I’m going to put it over here so that I can own my time and eventually have that money fund my entire life.”
This is so dumb lol idk why I’m even sharing it. Winning the lottery is literally the only way you’re getting rich at McDonalds.
I’ve done research on this. In one study, we looked at a group of people who [each] had about $11 million in net worth, and we compared them to a group of people who [each] had about $500,000 in net worth. These people had almost 18 times more money. And what we found is they only spent twice as much, on their house, their vacation, their watch and their car.
Some millionaires are making 18x more than a couple lower class peasants who only make half a million a year and they’re only spending twice as much? They’ll be poor forever at this rate 🤪
This scientist treated her own cancer with viruses she grew in the lab
She chose to target her tumour with two different viruses consecutively — a measles virus followed by a vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). Both pathogens are known to infect the type of cell from which her tumour originated, and have already been used in OVT clinical trials.
Halassy felt a responsibility to publish her findings. But she received more than a dozen rejections from journals…because the paper…involved self-experimentation.
Self experimentation has led to a lot of medical breakthroughs. It almost seems more humane to me in a way but I can totally see how you wouldn’t wanna advertise someone self-curing cancer with a virus. Next thing you know there’s a new trend on TikTok of shooting yourself up with staph to cure high cortisol levels.
Taylor Swift Fans Are Leaving X for Bluesky After Trump’s Election
“I think that’s the kind of rhetoric we want to get away from,” Kim says. She also notes that X’s recent update to the “block” feature, which allows people to see the profile and posts of users that have blocked them, has contributed to a more negative experience on the platform. “Twitter has definitely become such a hellscape,” Kim says.
I like Swifties. I’d much rather hang out with them than the alt right cryptobros on xitter. Love seeing the community grow
Trump plans to dismantle Biden AI safeguards after victory
Biden’s order established wide-ranging oversight of AI development. Among its core provisions, the order established the US AI Safety Institute (AISI) and lays out requirements for companies to submit reports about AI training methodologies and security measures, including vulnerability testing data.
Representative Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) warned that reporting requirements could discourage innovation and prevent developments like ChatGPT. And Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) characterized NIST’s AI safety standards as an attempt to control speech through “woke” safety requirements.
Honestly at this point I’m okay with being reduced to paste by a T-9000 unit
‘The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet’ Has Finally Been Identified
It’s been an incredible year for solving long-running internet mysteries. In May, investigators tracked down “The Backrooms” and in September investigators identified “Celebrity Number Six.” Now it seems that The Mysterious Song has been discovered. It’s called “Subways Of the Mind” by the band FEX.
OMG this is like discovering life on Mars lol I’ve been following this for years.
Perplexity CEO offers AI company’s services to replace striking NYT staff
“Hundreds of millions of people are depending on The Times’s journalism on Election Day and afterward, and it is troubling that the Tech Guild would try to block this public service at such a consequential moment for our country.” - AG Sulzberger, NYT’s publisher
“Hey AG Sulzberger @nytimes sorry to see this. Perplexity is on standby to help ensure your essential coverage is available to all through the election. DM me anytime here.” - Aravind Srinivas, CEO, Perplexity
Gross. This just goes to show the very real goal of some AI companies to replace humans with chatbots.
Thousands of People Are Cloning Their Dead Pets. This Is the Woman They Call First
It had taken seven months and cost $50,000, but that cat was one of the first pets to be commercially cloned in the United States. Since then, a couple thousand dog, cat, and horse clones have followed, and every year the waiting list grows longer. Of course it does. Haven’t you ever wished your pet could live, if not forever, then at least as long as you? Now it can, sort of.
We’ve come a long way from Dolly the sheep 😳