October 13, 2022

Adams Ruins Patagonia. And Billionaires.

Adam Conover, famous for ruining everything [previously], takes to youtube for his first (presumably there will be more) longform rant about everyone's new favorite billionaire Yvon Chouinard (recently on the blue) and explaining Why There's No Such Thing as a Good Billionaire [more inside]
posted by revmitcz at 6:22 PM PST - 89 comments

Facebook's Legs Video Was A Lie

Earlier this week Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage to demonstrate that avatars would no longer be mere floating torsos, but would soon have legs. It was a very weird video existing in a very weird space. Zuckerberg was clearly seen jumping around in the video, giving everyone an early look at the tech. Or was he?
posted by AlSweigart at 5:45 PM PST - 88 comments

Jan 6 committee subpoenas Trump

The latest report from the congressional committee investigating the insurrection on Jan 6 has advised that they will subpoena former President Donald J. Trump for questioning and any relevant documentation related to that day. After the resolution was passed on a voice vote, a roll call vote was requested. The resolution passed unanimously. Video for the entire most recent hearing is here.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 5:00 PM PST - 84 comments

Loisaida, I love you. Your buildings are burning up

A Spoken History Of The Nuyorican Poets Cafe. The Nuyorican Poets Cafe started in a small New York City living room in 1973 and has since then nurtured countless artists, such as poet Pedro Pietri (“Puerto Rican Obituary”). Today, the Cafe continues to hold space in Losaida (Lower East Side's Puerto Rican & Hispanic community as renamed by artist Bimbo Rivas) and online. Aja Monet, who was the youngest poet to win the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe Grandslam Championship, speaks about the importance of the space in an interview just last month.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:29 PM PST - 5 comments

Did you know our filthy abattoir offers tours? Book your place today!

Tours of Amazon Fulfilment centers are live in 8 countries. You just have to answer a few questions: How much do you know about Amazon? How do you feel about ordering from Amazon? How do you feel about Amazon as an Employer? [more inside]
posted by wowenthusiast at 11:42 AM PST - 26 comments

Speech-to-text with Whisper

Whisper, from OpenAI, is an open source tool you can run on your own computer that "approaches human level robustness and accuracy on English speech recognition"; "Moreover, it enables transcription in multiple languages, as well as translation from those languages into English." Instructions on how to download, install, and run it. (I have successfully used Whisper and the results were very good. However, it is not fast enough to run during recording of an interview and give you live captions/transcripts; it runs after the fact, on already-recorded audio.) [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 10:58 AM PST - 62 comments

Never say always

Russia's Crimea disconnect A brief account of Crimea's complicated history with both Russia and Ukraine by historian Timothy Snyder.
posted by klangklangston at 10:52 AM PST - 23 comments

Harriet and the Matches

A spooky season video inspired by a German fairy tale with voices by Cillian Murphy and Bernice Stegers. Warning for the death of a child (this is an old school fairy tale). SLVimeo, just over 4 minutes.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:21 AM PST - 5 comments

The Joke is You Can Do This More or Less in the Open, No One Will Care

I made $200,000 last year ghostwriting tweets for superstar VCs. It takes me 5 hours a week. Here's how I found my clients and built a booming side hustle from scratch. [Business Insider; archive]
posted by chavenet at 4:32 AM PST - 30 comments

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