Lou Katz @lou@entropyservice.com

Insurance Company CEOs in meetings right now:

CEO: what should we do to prevent me from being shot next?

Employee: Stop denying so many claims.

Employee: Lower premiums.

Employee: Treat our clients like human beings.

CEO: Bodyguards it is.

News: AWS announces $1 billion cloud credit for AI startups

Experienced AWS IT person: That's equivalent to 3 whole days of usage for inexperienced devs who leave overprovisioned resources up and running, causing higher monthly AWS bills.

Amazon workers: Reading this from the warehouses where they get 2 candies as a bonus for months of overtime work and a bottle to pee in.

people say we need to bring back the guillotine but I say we need to bring back the trebuchet. far more entertaining.

Q: How far are we from fusion power?
A: 1 AU.

Musk didn’t invent Tesla, he bought it
Musk didn’t invent SpaceX, he bought it
Musk didn’t invent Starlink, he bought it
Musk didn’t invent “X,” he bought it
Musk didn’t invent Trump, he bought him

- Nazir Afzal

Murdered Insurance CEO Had Deployed an AI to Automatically Deny Benefits for Sick People
https://futurism.com/neoscope/united-healthcare-claims-algorithm-murder
#insurance #InsuranceCEO #brianthompson #unitedhealthcareceo #unitedhealthcare #healthinsurance #denydefenddepose

I’m reading the book referenced here, “Defying Hitler,” an autobiography by pseudonymous Sebastian Haffner about his experiences as a child in Germany in WWI through the rise of the Nazis, focusing on 1933. It articulates many of my feelings about modern USA. I hear the dehumanizing and violent rhetoric, otherization, and lawful reversal of rights. I see the complacency and mass mindset. Read it! Be prepared for your character tests. Wow.

From: @xankarn
https://mastodon.online/@xankarn/111038554016216188

"Of the more than 75,000 gunfire alerts the city’s #ShotSpotter system has generated since 2015, the New York City Police Department was only able to confirm that 16.57 percent of them were actual gunfire, as opposed to fireworks, construction, or other loud sounds" https://gizmodo.com/the-nypds-fancy-gunshot-detector-is-almost-completely-useless-2000534171

"Of the more than 75,000 gunfire alerts the city’s #ShotSpotter system has generated since 2015, the New York City Police Department was only able to confirm that 16.57 percent of them were actual gunfire, as opposed to fireworks, construction, or other loud sounds" https://gizmodo.com/the-nypds-fancy-gunshot-detector-is-almost-completely-useless-2000534171

“Healthcare provider” is such a bullshit euphemism. Health insurance companies aren’t the providers of care; they’re the obstacles, the parasitic middle-men leeching off the system to the point of widespread breakdown. Brian Thompson’s company didn’t provide shit except returns to investors.

The Canadian #border is sprouting the same #surveillance towers as the Southern border with Mexico. https://vtdigger.org/2024/12/02/eye-in-the-sky-the-feds-have-quietly-built-surveillance-towers-along-the-canadian-border-in-vermont-new-york/

"The action proposed by the #CFPB is aimed, Chopra says, at stopping #databrokers from “enabling scammers, stalkers and spies undermining our personal safety and America's national security.” https://www.wired.com/story/cfpb-fcra-data-broker-oversight/

Default (noun): Initial configuration settings of a system or application designed to take advantage of users' ignorance and/or confusion regarding the operations of the system or application, to benefit the provider of the system or application -- often implemented in manners that are relatively hidden and difficult for users to change.

In a secret chamber buried deep within Earth's outer core, a gigantic robot named Unix is counting to 2.15 billion. There he has sat undisturbed since January 1, 1970. Unix is up to 1.7 billion. He's very tired, but he must count. One day, 14 years from now, he will have counted to the highest number imaginable. Boiling water will no longer make steam. The moon will emit a Glow That Is Not Light. Out of volcanoes, the winged beasts will emerge. And Unix will finally know what it is to rest

"The artificial intelligence community has prioritized verisimilitude at the expense of veracity. They didn’t have to do that; it was a choice, perhaps influenced by Alan Turing’s idea that an intelligent machine should be able to impersonate a human."

The result: "an endless supply of plausible bullshit"

@gleick in @nybooks

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2024/11/23/a-genius-for-mimicry/

An important thing about Elon Musk that’s widely known in tech circles but perhaps not in the wider world: he’s an ignoramus.

His technical knowledge is shallow and careless, full of parroting and fantasizing.

People who’ve worked on the small amount of code he actually wrote long ago describe his work as an unskilled mess.

At every company he runs, there are teams of people devoted to keeping him away from the engineers, who largely succeed to the extent that he forgets they exist.

1/3

One of the likely paths that concern me is a cycle where more extreme and brutal acts by the administration results in more protests which result in more extreme and brutal suppression AND more right-wing private-but-endorsed violence, in a feedback loop.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3laor4eaolc2s

Via Marc Elias:

If you are a Democrat who is spending time attacking Kamala Harris or her campaign rather than focusing on the fight ahead, you aren't helping anyone.

Over 50% of Americans cannot read at a high school level.

But we're going to try to tell them about Trump being an authoritarian or fascist.

They don't know what these words mean and they lack the intellectual framework and knowledge of history to understand the explanation.

The end.