The headline is patently false.

FTA

We do not develop LLMs or other generative models using customer data.

If you want to act like you’re better than Reddit you’re going to have to start actually being better.

“code is law” can become “might makes right” without oversight. Those who lobby against oversight are a problem.

well that and the tax cuts that Reagan implemented knowing full well that trickle-down economics were a fraud.
and regulatory capture of most of your institutions
and the loss of local manufacturing jobs (which are actually starting to come back) and the increased acceptance of nazism/fascism by people whose parents and grandparents fought against those very ideologies

but mostly because the increasing divide between rich and poor is not being condemned but rather celebrated by the same anxiety-inducing media that drools at the thought of the aforementioned shit-show.

America, you could do so much better. You just don’t. It’s so goddamn disappointing.

Listen: your neighbours love you, your friends love you, but you’re doing terribly. It’s really really hard to talk to you about it because when you get defensive holy fucking shit you can be difficult to deal with. You keep telling everyone that you’re the greatest (you tell yourself that most of all) and you do it so well and you believe it so intrinsically, that you’ve become blind to your own problems. You’re supposed to protect the weak and the vulnerable, and yet you’ve decided that people with no power aren’t worth your time, or your effort, or worth anything at all. That’s not a nation, it’s abuse. It’s a crying shame.

Do Better.

in the 80’s we kept getting told about the evils of homosexuality from men whose breath probably smelt of truck-stop foreskin.

They also cosplay as followers of Jesus Christ.

CNN learned everything they ever needed to learn during The Gulf War. They learned that if shit goes off the rails then people watch as much as they can. It’s in their financial interest to keep things off of the rails.

I guess “not sending their best” applies all over the place

If he gets back into office you’ll hear that “not a democracy” line quite a lot.

Joe Biden wants to maintain NATO, which is an organization of bullies

If you think Biden is a foreign asset and that NATO are bullies, then holy sweet shit you enjoy your delusion.

not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect

What gets me is that, for the right style of music, age or attractiveness shouldn’t matter as much as it does. You should be able to create your art, whatever kind of art it is, and have the art itself be judged on its merits. Instead we’ve got a bunch of our culture still somehow wrapped up in these veneers of attractiveness. It’s kind of maddening, to be honest. If you’re in your 50’s and making 90’s style Acid House or 2000’s style Trance it shouldn’t matter what you look like. If you’re a DJ it shouldn’t matter if you look like Shirley Temple or Shirley Manson. And yet here we are.

8 million listens netting you only 40 bucks really is insane, isn’t it? I used to think radio royalties were bad: I remember Sting talking about how every time Roxanne got played on the radio someone somewhere got 3 cents. He didn’t say who got the 3 cents, nor did he say how much of that 3 cents went to him. I’m not 100% sure about those numbers (“my memory is muddy, what’s this river that I’m in?”) but they’re a damn sight more impressive than whatever crumbs the streaming companies are paying, somehow a thousand times less than the radio. Spotify’s announcement last year that they weren’t even going to bother paying for songs with less than 1000 streams per month was a shocker - what stops them from making it 2000, or 10,000?

Still, being a hobbyist isn’t all bad. I’ve been releasing jazz cover-versions of pop songs for about 2.5 years now, and have netted about 25 bucks so far :) Who knew jazz versions of Toxic or Rusted From The Rain could be so popular?