Always remember, the right hates people capable of understanding their grift
‘He feels empowered’: DeSantis kicks off takeover of second liberal Florida school:
Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, has engineered a second “hostile takeover” of a liberal-leaning state school, education watchers say, after he installed a number of staunch conservatives to the board of trustees at the University of West Florida (UWF).
The move almost exactly mirrors the governor’s 2023 seizure of power at Sarasota’s New College of Florida, in which he ousted the sitting board of the popular liberal arts school and replaced them with hardline cronies in what a national university professor’s union denounced as an “aggressively ideological and politically motivated” move.
Meta’s Free-Speech Shift Made It Clear to Advertisers: ‘Brand Safety’ Is Out of Vogue - WSJ
Brand safety “has become politicized and it was never motivated by politics,” said Brad Jakeman, a former marketer at PepsiCo. The movement around brand safety happened because “we heard from our consumers that they felt uncomfortable with our brands being connected to content that they found offensive,” he said.
In December, just days after advertising giant Omnicom agreed to acquire Interpublic, Jordan launched a probe into the merger, seeking information on the companies’ ties to the trade group that Musk sued. Among the requests made in Jordan’s letter to Omnicom’s CEO: “all documents and communications related to so-called ‘brand safety.’” Ad executives say they are wary of putting a target on their backs by speaking up about brand safety, and some agencies are now reluctant to send clients “point-of-view” memos on the topic when online controversies arise.
(My emphasis). This is the chilling effect of Trumpism, which extends a long way beyond his executive power. It’s the ability to make people and companies believe that it’s simply not worth the hassle to go up against them, to rely on the expense and inconvenience of doing anything which may be percieved as not being in line with them. In the end, people will censor themselves.
Daring Fireball: Siri Is Super Dumb and Getting Dumber
Daring Fireball: Siri Is Super Dumb and Getting Dumber:
Old Siri — which is to say pre-Apple-Intelligence Siri — does OK on this same question. On my Mac running MacOS 15.1.1, where ChatGPT integration is not yet available, Siri declined to answer the question itself and provided a list of links, search-engine-style, and the top link was to this two-page PDF listing the complete history of North Dakota’s Class A boys’ and girls’ champions, but only through 2019. Not great, but good enough.
New Siri — powered by Apple Intelligence™ with ChatGPT integration enabled — gets the answer completely but plausibly wrong, which is the worst way to get it wrong. It’s also inconsistently wrong — I tried the same question four times, and got a different answer, all of them wrong, each time. It’s a complete failure.
I’ve been saying for a while that most LLM-based “assistants” will be worse than what they replace. Older assistants were limited in domain, but largely pretty good at what they could do. LLM-powered assistants don’t know their own limitations.
Congress finds Trump's TikTok sale scheme confusing, possibly illegal - Live Updates - POLITICO
Congress finds Trump's TikTok sale scheme confusing, possibly illegal - Live Updates - POLITICO:
Members of Congress are declaring themselves bewildered by Donald Trump’s latest proposal to save TikTok by brokering a joint-ownership deal.
“I don’t know what he means by that," said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), of Trump’s suggestion to broker a “joint venture” in which “the U.S. should be entitled to get half of TikTok.”
“I don’t understand what the president is doing,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
One thing that is worth remembering about Trump: his entire career has been built on the principle of making it costly to oppose him, often by tying up his “enemies” in court. Opposing him then become so costly in time and money that it’s not worth the effort. Will this also work on Congress? I think we’re about to find out.
Quarter of English councils may have to sell homes
Quarter of English councils may have to sell homes to balance books, study finds:
As part of other efforts to balance budgets, 28% of councils said they expected to sell off existing housing stock, while 45% are already using reserves to cover day-to-day spending. Of the 76 councils, 71 highlighted at least one sign of financial stress over housing.
One of the worst legacies of the Thatcherite era was the sell-off of council housing. While it meant that council tenants could get on “the property ladder”, the law prevented councils from reinvesting the money in new housing, which meant that stock ran down over time. Add in the horrible squeeze on council funding of the austerity era and you get a toxic brew that will take Labour a decade to sort out.
German ambassador warns of Trump plan to redefine constitutional order
German ambassador warns of Trump plan to redefine constitutional order, document shows
Germany’s ambassador to the United States has warned that the incoming Trump administration will rob U.S. law enforcement and the media of their independence and hand big tech companies “co-governing power”, according to a confidential document seen by Reuters… “Basic democratic principles and checks and balances will be largely undermined, the legislature, law enforcement and media will be robbed of their independence and misused as a political arm, Big Tech will be given co-governing power,” it says.
Bear in mind that this will not have been written without significant intelligence work. Dark, dark times for America, I’m afraid.
Honestly, if you fancy a glimpse into some of the most batshit stuff on the planet, doing a site search on citizengo.org for the word “woke” will leave you with your mouth open. Apparently it’s mostly “the transgenders”, of course. Woke, the lot of ya.
The sad tale of Power Computer (and no, they weren't bought by Apple)
Most Mac users of a certain age remember Power Computing, the Mac cloner who undercut Apple with better machines back in the mid-90s. Apple ended up buying Power Computing out and putting an end to the clone market. Well if you can’t compete, use your financial muscle.
It’s often said that Apple bought the company – but it didn’t. Even Wikipedia gets this wrong, claiming that Power was an Apple subsidiary. In fact, what Apple bought was the Mac-related assets of Power, including the license to make Mac clones. Apple did not acquire the company.
And, in fact, Power had a brief life post-Apple acquisition. It attempted to launch an Intel-based Windows laptop, the PowerTrip. However, it seems to have run out of money before it could launch – at least I can’t find any references to anyone ever getting their hands on the PowerTrip – and it got sued by its suppliers.
By the end of January 1998, Power was gone. Ironically, if the company had survived for longer, the $100m in Apple stock would have been worth a lot, lot more than Power itself ever was or could have been.
I’m sure that somewhere in a box, I still have some of their stickers.
Systemic Risk Reporting: A System in Crisis?
Instead of relying on platforms or regulators to define how risks should be conceptualized and mitigated, a joint approach is needed—one that builds on expertise by civil society, academics and activists, and emphasizes best practices. A collaborative approach would help make sense of these complex challenges and how they can be addressed in ways that strengthen users’ rights and protect fundamental rights.
The “something” that I was testing earlier (which worked) is the integration between Drummer and Micro.blog. I’ve always been a fan of outliners, and I’m interested in maybe using this one.
File under “things which make absolutely no sense at all”
Tom MacDonald and Roseanne Barr have written what can loosely be called ‘a song’ for Trump’s inauguration. And it is as bad as you might expect. The first lines are:
We won, you mad/It’s done, too bad/Boo-hoo, so sad/Now your daddy’s home
SpaceX calls their explosions “rapid unscheduled disassemblies,” which I think is intended as a joke, a parody of corporate euphemisms (while still trying to deflect attention from the danger). It reminds me of the language used by manufacturers of certain types of light bulbs. When their products explode, they call it a “nonpassive failure.” And they’re not trying to be funny.
Did Donald Trump Really Just Drop a Solana Meme Coin? - Decrypt
On-chain sleuths pointed to potential red flags, including the apparent fact that the project was seeded with millions of dollars of funds from Binance and Gate—two exchanges that don’t serve U.S. customers. But some other apparent concerns diminished with further sleuthing, not to mention with time as Trump’s social posts remained online.
Barf.
Over on my big school blog, Ten Blue Links is a day late, but you’ll forgive that, won’t you?
Some nifty news: Ghost is getting ActivityPub features this year. This makes me even happier that I moved from WordPress to Ghost.