Weekend Vibes [DOT 25/5/24]

25/5/24 MegMegMcGee 33

Hope everyone had a great week! I had a long work week, so I’m glad that is over, especially since I’m off work for a minute now. Got any good plans for the long weekend?

Those poor parents

Uvalde parents sue gunmaker, ‘Call of Duty’ manufacturer and Meta
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/24/uvalde-lawsuits-daniel-defense-meta-activision

This is the kind of news I want to share with my BFF’s Mom

Sam Butcher, artist who created ‘Precious Moments,’ dies at 85
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/05/24/sam-butcher-precious-moments-dead

Here’s something to fight about…

Apple Says These Are the 100 Best Albums. Even If You Think Different.
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/apple-music-100-best-albums-list-5010bfb9?st=414cwwo28llwyb1&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Sprots!

What we know and what we don’t about a historic settlement to pay college athletes
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/24/nx-s1-4978680/house-ncaa-settlement-pay-college-athletes

Stonks!

Nasdaq closes Friday at record high as Nvidia and the AI trade rallies on
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/23/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

Another guy I love:

Have a super Saturday!

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33 Comments

  2. Today in Bryan Bitches About Polls:

    Nate Cohn just put asterisks by every NYT poll of late showing Trump leading

    Cohn:

    The polls have shown Donald Trump with an edge for eight straight months, but there’s a sign his advantage might not be quite as stable as it looks: His lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote.

    Disengaged voters on the periphery of the electorate are driving the polling results — and the story line — about the election.

    Former Stars and Stripes managing editor:

    The Times literally just admitted to turning around shaky information for the better part of a year. This lede is so loaded, I’m surprised Cohn’s desk didn’t collapse when he typed it.

    Daily Kos:

    Cohn is effectively saying that much of Trump’s lead is built on disengaged voters

    Cohn again:

    Mr. Trump’s strength among low-turnout and less engaged voters helps explain a lot of what’s strange about this election. It illustrates the disconnect between Mr. Trump’s lead in the polls and Democratic victories in lower-turnout special elections. And it helps explain Mr. Trump’s gains among young and nonwhite voters, who tend to be among the least engaged. His strength among young voters, in particular, is almost entirely found among those who did not vote in the midterms.

    Me:

    So you’re saying that the NYT has been lying about its polls for eight months. Got it.

    • I heard a good take on polls I hadn’t thought of before.  Part of the ignorant Trump voter disbelief in fair elections is that the polls are so off.  If you keep being told of this red wave that never comes you stop trusting fair elections instead of shitty media w/ an agenda or politicians that can’t stop lying.

      • That’s a very good point. And you’re right, these fuckers lying about their polls just exacerbates the “stolen election” bullshit. MAGAs are already stupid — I mentioned the other day that they tend to think that since everyone they know voted for Trump that means everybody everywhere did. It doesn’t occur to them that Bugtussle has less people than New York City.

  3. Speaking of Republican misinformation:

    • It’s more than crowd size, that’s the Maga play book. Do or say something insane, sane people react, Maga call them hysterical and say they are in the sane people’s head and sane people can’t handle it. Rinse, repeat, reality never comes into play.

      • Also drown out coverage of real issues. There is nothing media execs love more than bemoaning the ignorance of their audiences except flooding the news with trivia.

        Ratings for the news are fading and the reaction of the execs has been to blame the world and not themselves.

        • The news has lost so many viewers to social media it has to use viewers clickbait to get any attention & Trump is the ultimate clickbait.  They don’t care about news anymore, just sensationalism.  That & billionaires owning all the media is a bad combo for democracy surviving.

      • All that is true of course, but it’s just weird. Trump could have hate rallies in the Bronx from now til Doomsday and he’s NOT going to win the state of New York. It’s not going to happen. So why do it?

        I feel like it’s going back to the thesis of Trump is preparing to lose. The Bronx is handy, since he’s stuck in New York for his trial. It’s probably fairly cheap for the campaign, since they won’t pay any fees to the city anyway. He can get in some rounds of golf this weekend.

        It makes him look like he’s campaigning when he’s really not, I guess to keep the oil billionaires writing checks. Which Trump will ultimately abscond with. I’d say the billionaires are too smart to fall for this, but post-Elon I think most of them are largely dumb and lucky.

        I’m telling you, the dude knows he’s fucked, and he’s vacuuming up cash. It’s another grift.

            • …think that’s been going around for a while

              …basically on the model of a casting call for movie extras & at similar rates…a few bucks & a sandwich with a soda for a few hours of standing around in costume, basically

              …that sound like the sort of thing you mean?

              • Basically. I mean, Trump ain’t parting with cash money. But buying hamberders in bulk is on brand. IIRC, I saw a tweet saying that the campaign was using Craigslist to recruit attendees, but any specific compensation wasn’t mentioned. Handing out ice cream or something would work, it would explain the steady stream of departing and arriving people, and if you get called out you just say you were taking care of your constituents.

    • I just read more about the Trump Crotona Park rally. The (two) pictures I saw were kind of in close-up, so you saw white hands holding up smartphones, and it looked crowded, but there was no context.

      Today I saw aerial photos and the NYPD estimate of 8,000 people. But then there was some hitherto unheard from loon-spokeswoman (that Trump campaign goes through people faster than I go through the pinot grigio) who claimed that over the course of the rally (how long did it last?) at least 25,000 people stopped by.

      The Bronx gets a bad rap. All these folks were bedecked in MAGA finery (“finery”). There’s actually plenty of parking in the Bronx. We used to drive to Crotona Park. So maybe they drove in and could skulk away. But what if some attendee was wearing a MAGA-related T-shirt or something and had to take the subway? They couldn’t really take it off, especially if they were a woman. Yet, there were no reports of post-rally subway assaults. I can imagine the non-violent confrontations. “Mamacita, you loca. You need help.”

        • I don’t know how they do these estimates. Aerial photos and then they count every head or body they can see? That would be incredibly tedious. There must be some formula. Adults squeezed in shoulder-to-shoulder in an acre equals X number of humans?

          Also, the NYPD are not exactly hostile to the Trump campaign and its themes.

  6. Google’s AI-Generated Search Results Keep Citing The Onion

    https://www.readtpa.com/p/googles-ai-generated-search-results-9e1

    Meanwhile:

    The Washington Post Tells Staff It’s Pivoting to AI

    https://futurism.com/washington-post-pivot-ai

    As an endless number of people have pointed out, AI can be useful for combing through a ton of data and sorting it into rough first drafts. But it’s terrible at precise work.

    Execs are toying with blowing up their basic legal defenses against copyright infringement and defamation in order to load uncanny valley simulations of the news. They really don’t know what they’re doing.

    • …there’s full-on AI generated “presenters” fronting straight up propaganda coming out of places like china, russia & india…& hitting zuck’s metaverse without making a splash about the ripple effect

      …but the headlines are about licensing deals with legacy media

      …which is just one riff on the problems with big tech’s approach but it has a david with cash taking on the goliaths so we let it ride as the canary in that coal-mine while things at the coal-face keep grinding away

      …c’est la vie?

  7. War in Ukraine on going. Looks like US and other western military aid showed up on time (especially artillery and guided munitions ammo.)

    Putin still talking about “cease” fire.

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