#controle google finance

[strangesmallbard]

hey so. i’ve seen many people reblogging some variation of “israel spent millions on a superbowl ad to distract everyone from the airstrikes on rafah” and decided to do some fact-checking. the ad was produced by the kraft foundation to stop jewish hate, founded by robert kraft, who owns the patriots. kraft also partnered with dr. clarence b. jones—who advised dr. martin king luther jr and helped him write the i have a dream speech—to create this ad. according to tara levine, the fcas president, this ad was made in response to rising antisemitism on social media platforms, which her team tracks.

here’s a link to the foundation’s about page on their website. their mission statement solely focuses on combatting antisemitism and does not mention i/p or the ongoing war. the ad itself does not mention i/p or the ongoing war. it’s pretty ironic, and yet not surprising, that an ad created to stop antisemitism is currently the eye of the antisemitic storm on social media. if you sincerely believe netanyahu secretly funded this ad campaign to “distract everyone” from the idf’s airstrike attack in rafa, then you have bought into two different antisemitic conspiracy theories: that jews control the media and that diasporic jews have dual loyalty to israel. while political zionists have used accusations of antisemitism to invalidate pro-palestinian efforts, that’s not what’s happening here. all this information is obtainable via google. please learn to fact check yourselves before posting. thanks!

(bonus: here’s a 20-minute video where kraft and dr. jones discuss the civil rights movement, anti-black racism, antisemitism, and the history of solidarity between black and jewish activists during the civil rights movement.)

EDIT 2/23/24:

after publishing this post, i researched robert kraft and fcas' funding source and pro-israel efforts more deeply, then analyzed my findings in a reblog, which you can read here. tl;dr version - in 2019, kraft was given the genesis prize, a $1 million dollar award. the awarding foundation has direct ties to the israeli government. kraft used part of these funds to finance fcas. this additional information does not negate my original post, however; i can't find any conclusive evidence that the israeli government directly funded kraft's superbowl ad. there is also no evidence that kraft is targeting anti-israel sentiment in the ad rather than antisemitism overall. assuming this connection is still evidence of antisemitic conspiratorial thought, as i detail above.

i'm including this information because i believe it's important to acknolwedge wider context. i don't share kraft's politics re: israel and believe his stance compromises his foundation's overall messaging. i also condemn any efforts to silence pro-palestinian efforts with accusations of antisemitism, but that is still not what's happening here. i also want to clarify that i'm only discussing responses i've seen to kraft's ad, not the ads produced by the israeli government. thanks again!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI is a WMD

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (TOMORROW, May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (TOMORROW, May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Get that? If control over a key resource is diffused among the people who rely on it, then (Garrett claims) those people will all behave like selfish assholes, overusing and undermaintaining the commons. It's only when we let someone own that commons and charge rent for its use that (Hardin says) we will get sound management.

By that logic, Google should be the internet's most competent and reliable manager. After all, the company used its access to the capital markets to buy control over the internet, spending billions every year to make sure that you never try a search-engine other than its own, thus guaranteeing it a 90% market share:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Google seems to think it's got the problem of deciding what we see on the internet licked. Otherwise, why would the company flush $80b down the toilet with a giant stock-buyback, and then do multiple waves of mass layoffs, from last year's 12,000 person bloodbath to this year's deep cuts to the company's "core teams"?

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

And yet, Google is overrun with scams and spam, which find their way to the very top of the first page of its search results:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The entire internet is shaped by Google's decisions about what shows up on that first page of listings. When Google decided to prioritize shopping site results over informative discussions and other possible matches, the entire internet shifted its focus to producing affiliate-link-strewn "reviews" that would show up on Google's front door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

This was catnip to the kind of sociopath who a) owns a hedge-fund and b) hates journalists for being pain-in-the-ass, stick-in-the-mud sticklers for "truth" and "facts" and other impediments to the care and maintenance of a functional reality-distortion field. These dickheads started buying up beloved news sites and converting them to spam-farms, filled with garbage "reviews" and other Google-pleasing, affiliate-fee-generating nonsense.

(These news-sites were vulnerable to acquisition in large part thanks to Google, whose dominance of ad-tech lets it cream 51 cents off every ad dollar and whose mobile OS monopoly lets it steal 30 cents off every in-app subscriber dollar):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now, the spam on these sites didn't write itself. Much to the chagrin of the tech/finance bros who bought up Sports Illustrated and other venerable news sites, they still needed to pay actual human writers to produce plausible word-salads. This was a waste of money that could be better spent on reverse-engineering Google's ranking algorithm and getting pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

That's where AI comes in. Spicy autocomplete absolutely can't replace journalists. The planet-destroying, next-word-guessing programs from Openai and its competitors are incorrigible liars that require so much "supervision" that they cost more than they save in a newsroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

But while a chatbot can't produce truthful and informative articles, it can produce bullshit – at unimaginable scale. Chatbots are the workers that hedge-fund wreckers dream of: tireless, uncomplaining, compliant and obedient producers of nonsense on demand.

That's why the capital class is so insatiably horny for chatbots. Chatbots aren't going to write Hollywood movies, but studio bosses hyperventilated at the prospect of a "writer" that would accept your brilliant idea and diligently turned it into a movie. You prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a studio exec gives writers notes. The difference is that the LLM won't roll its eyes and make sarcastic remarks about your brainwaves like "ET, but starring a dog, with a love plot in the second act and a big car-chase at the end":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Similarly, chatbots are a dream come true for a hedge fundie who ends up running a beloved news site, only to have to fight with their own writers to get the profitable nonsense produced at a scale and velocity that will guarantee a high Google ranking and millions in "passive income" from affiliate links.

One of the premier profitable nonsense companies is Advon, which helped usher in an era in which sites from Forbes to Money to USA Today create semi-secret "review" sites that are stuffed full of badly researched top-ten lists for products from air purifiers to cat beds:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

Advon swears that it only uses living humans to produce nonsense, and not AI. This isn't just wildly implausible, it's also belied by easily uncovered evidence, like its own employees' Linkedin profiles, which boast of using AI to create "content":

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

It's not true. Advon uses AI to produce its nonsense, at scale. In an excellent, deeply reported piece for Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré brings proof that Advon replaced its miserable human nonsense-writers with tireless chatbots:

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

Dupré describes how Advon's ability to create botshit at scale contributed to the enshittification of clients from Yoga Journal to the LA Times, "Us Weekly" to the Miami Herald.

All of this is very timely, because this is the week that Google finally bestirred itself to commence downranking publishers who engage in "site reputation abuse" – creating these SEO-stuffed fake reviews with the help of third parties like Advon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

(Google's policy only forbids site reputation abuse with the help of third parties; if these publishers take their nonsense production in-house, Google may allow them to continue to dominate its search listings):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

There's a reason so many people believed Hardin's racist "Tragedy of the Commons" hoax. We have an intuitive understanding that commons are fragile. All it takes is one monster to start shitting in the well where the rest of us get our drinking water and we're all poisoned.

The financial markets love these monsters. Mark Zuckerberg's key insight was that he could make billions by assembling vast dossiers of compromising, sensitive personal information on half the world's population without their consent, but only if he kept his costs down by failing to safeguard that data and the systems for exploiting it. He's like a guy who figures out that if he accumulates enough oily rags, he can extract so much low-grade oil from them that he can grow rich, but only if he doesn't waste money on fire-suppression:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Now Zuckerberg and the wealthy, powerful monsters who seized control over our commons are getting a comeuppance. The weak countermeasures they created to maintain the minimum levels of quality to keep their platforms as viable, going concerns are being overwhelmed by AI. This was a totally foreseeable outcome: the history of the internet is a story of bad actors who upended the assumptions built into our security systems by automating their attacks, transforming an assault that wouldn't be economically viable into a global, high-speed crime wave:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/automation-is-magic/

But it is possible for a community to maintain a commons. This is something Hardin could have discovered by studying actual commons, instead of inventing imaginary histories in which commons turned tragic. As it happens, someone else did exactly that: Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/

Ostrom described how commons can be wisely managed, over very long timescales, by communities that self-governed. Part of her work concerns how users of a commons must have the ability to exclude bad actors from their shared resources.

When that breaks down, commons can fail – because there's always someone who thinks it's fine to shit in the well rather than walk 100 yards to the outhouse.

Enshittification is the process by which control over the internet moved from self-governance by members of the commons to acts of wanton destruction committed by despicable, greedy assholes who shit in the well over and over again.

It's not just the spammers who take advantage of Google's lazy incompetence, either. Take "copyleft trolls," who post images using outdated Creative Commons licenses that allow them to terminate the CC license if a user makes minor errors in attributing the images they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

The first copyleft trolls were individuals, but these days, the racket is dominated by a company called Pixsy, which pretends to be a "rights protection" agency that helps photographers track down copyright infringers. In reality, the company is committed to helping copyleft trolls entrap innocent Creative Commons users into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use images that are licensed for free use. Just as Advon upends the economics of spam and deception through automation, Pixsy has figured out how to send legal threats at scale, robolawyering demand letters that aren't signed by lawyers; the company refuses to say whether any lawyer ever reviews these threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

This is shitting in the well, at scale. It's an online WMD, designed to wipe out the commons. Creative Commons has allowed millions of creators to produce a commons with billions of works in it, and Pixsy exploits a minor error in the early versions of CC licenses to indiscriminately manufacture legal land-mines, wantonly blowing off innocent commons-users' legs and laughing all the way to the bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

We can have an online commons, but only if it's run by and for its users. Google has shown us that any "benevolent dictator" who amasses power in the name of defending the open internet will eventually grow too big to care, and will allow our commons to be demolished by well-shitters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Catherine Poh Huay Tan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/49729911222/

Laia Balagueró (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbalaguero/6551235503/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[vivmaek]

MERCURY IN THE 6th HOUSE: Observations

People with this placement are incredibly efficient. Their mind is in tune with their body, they move quickly and with grace. These types can tackle a day full of tasks and errands with ease. In fact, staying busy and mentally stimulated through their work almost has a soothing effect upon them. Especially if it requires a hand on approach or some sort of physical movement. Mercury sixth housers are prone to nervousness and anxiety, and these feelings often showcase themselves as guilty thoughts. At the end of the night they might be plagued with ideas about their perceived failings. They struggle with imperfection and think small issues are bigger than they actually are. Discovering that they don't have enough time to finish a task, or noticing a minor detail being off within their work is enough to send them into a spiral. Especially if other people are depending on them. They put a lot of pressure on themselves and it can be difficult to live up to their own high expectations. This same type of attitude also applies to their health. Mercury sixth housers are known for their hypochondriac tendencies. It’s easy for them to convince themselves that something is wrong with their body. They’re the types to google symptoms for hours on end, desperate to find an answer to their problem which is most likely psychosomatic. Stress will take a toll on their body and it's important that they make time for rest. Having anxiety especially affects their stomach. They might struggle with nausea or a poor appetite. Developing a method for relaxation outside of productive activities and work is also important. Implementing daily walks or some sort of cardio into their routine can help. Meditation and breathing exercises would be easy for Mercury sixth housers to pick up on compared to most. They want to maintain control over their body in the same way they control the daily activities of their life. A cluttered space clutters up their mind and this is something they’d like to avoid. They have a talent for planning and organization, their approach is meticulous and almost scientific. They’re very practical and stick to routines that keep them down to earth. Mercury sixth housers also have a good grasp on economics and know how to manage their finances well. They pay their bills on time and are always tracking how much money is flowing in and out of their accounts. Ultimately, Mercury sixth housers are set up for success thanks to their quick witted minds.

✰ my masterlist

[vivaciousofficiall]

I Am The Prize. (A Queen's Mentality)

2024, we are stepping out of our baby princess era ( victim mentality) and entering our Queendom.

Gone are the days of sending paragraphs, feeling powerless, being overly emotional, no boundaries, low standards & not taking proper care of ourselves. Kiss it Goodbye.

If you are reading this, then you are ready.

Here are three shifts you can begin to implement to kickstart your Queen Era.

1. INDEPENCE ON ALL LEVELS

True freedom is living life on your own terms. Some of us have spent too long in toxic friendships, romantic relationships and even family situations because we are codependent. We struggle to stand on our feet. We seek their attention, validation, approval , money etc.

We have forgotten our power. We have forgotten that we can give ourselves these things. Independence is key.

2024, we are working on providing ourselves with everything we need.

Start by

Moving more on your own time.

Get your finances together

Take care of your health

Know yourself ( the real you, not the mask you've been wearing)

Start seeking your own validation ( an independent thinker)

Go out by yourself

Educate yourself

Practice Celibacy/Abstinence

There's so much you could do.

2.EMOTIONAL CONTROL

This is so crucial. Emotional control is a must. If you let your emotions run the show , you lose every single time.

A baby princess cannot see beyond her emotions. she's trapped in the world of fight or flight. She's in survival mode.

A Queen knows emotions are just information. She is the observer. She's able to sit back and think about the best way to respond NOT react.

She's cool, calm and collected. No one sees her break a sweat.

Start by

Taking a deep breath when you find yourself getting triggered

Realizing no one has power over you. You get to decide how you want to show up everyday

By being selective on what you give your energy to.

3.SELF AWARENESS

Google accountability. A baby princess lives life as if it is happening to her. She has forgotten she is the co creator & it always takes two to tango. The truth is deep down, she's addicted to being the victim.

A Queen knows she is a powerful creator. If she constantly finds herself in certain unpleasant situations, she knows she has the power to change it because she created it.

Start by

Observing how you show up in life. How do you see yourself ?How do you act in your interpersonal relationships? What are your daily thoughts like?

Ladies, 2024 is the year we win. Its time to thrive. We got this.

xoxo, Vivacious.

[atlurbanist]

Atlantic Station: before, after, & thoughts for the future

This is Atlantic Station (note: I've got this upside-down, with north on the bottom). It was built on a 138-acre brownfield, the former site of an Atlantic Steel facility that required major remediation.

The work involved the removal of 180,000 cubic yards of slag-contaminated soil. Steel slag is a by-product of steel manufacturing. In the absence of regulatory controls, it had been disposed of directly onto the Atlantic Steel property.

Also required was the installation of a groundwater extraction system to prevent contaminated water from running into adjacent properties or the municipal sewer system.

In 2002, this remediation work cost $25 million. The City of Atlanta created a Tax Allocation District in 1999 as part of a financing plan for the Atlantic Station project.

[Info source: Atlantic Station, Atlanta, Georgia: A Sustainable Brownfield Revitalization Best Practice, By Christopher De Sousa and Lily-Ann D’Souza. Image source: Google Earth]

There's no doubt that this was a majorly impressive undertaking.

But can we do even better for urban sustainability on this property? I see room for a BRT line through connecting to Howell Mill Rd and to MARTA rail, for instance. And how about a protected bike path?

Can we also improve the way this fits into the city's system of neighborhoods so that it feels like a natural extension? I'd like to see some truly public-owned space here with a community center, a library, and a city park.

[bluelolblue]

If he wasn't heir to the Camorra, what job do you think Santino would've chosen to do? And how would he meet John under those circumstances?

Oooh interesting question!

Hmmm... there are some options for sure!

So my first idea is...

Something in art museum, now that would be just like his childhood dream coming true. Even if he wasn't in Camorra, his family would still be into all that art (idk why, every rich family is into that, at least in movies 💀). So, um, whatever they do in those museums, he would like to do that (except being a security guard...). He would meet John kinda by accident there. OH WAIT I JUST GOT IDEAS!

First idea, John applying for a security guard, and he spotted Santino since he couldn't find anyone else to ask about that. So, like Santino explains everything and gets him there where he needs to apply and is like, "I'll be seeing you more often then." Because yes, they will be seeing each other more often.

Second idea is, John just coming there since lately he got interested into art and yk, wants to look at art and Santino spotted him, like really fucking handsome tall guy and he has to take his chance a little. "What is a guy like you doing here?" And he realizes that it sounds a bit wrong, "I mean, you know, a handsome guy like you. Not... not in a bad way." He's awkward. But John would just laugh a little at that and explain.

Okay, next job option, since he's bossy and is pretty good at controlling people... management in crisis situations. Okay, this is something I was also kinda looking for while thinking what colleges I should be looking at and I kinda liked the sound of it (but I'll be going to multimedia production, TV stuff, hopefully). And I think he would be really good at helping and controlling people when accidents or crises caused by nature occur or by human activity. Ofc he can't really be bitchy in those situations BUT he can control people, and he likes it. I mean, he's helping people, so he feels good about it. John is either another person working there, although not in the same group as him and they end up helping people together. OR, John was the one that got hurt in any kind of accident and Santino helped him :>.

I also think he would be really good as a broker. I'll quote from Google what broker is, don't let my economic school know that I still didn't quite learn what that is 💀🤫: "Brokers manage various business deals such as investments, real estate, or insurance within the finance and banking industries. Brokers act as a liaison between parties, create and maintain relationships, administer sales, and perform administrative tasks. And manager of a hotel." Yeah, he's kinda giving me that vibe :P. How would he meet John there? John would be his client... a very special client 😏

Speaking of manager of a hotel- he's also giving me a vibe of being a hotel manager. Like... imagine... BIG ASS FANCY HOTEL BY HIM. Manager Santino D'Antonio at your service✨️ John is a guest... a special guest 😏. Maybe he's there because of some business and needs the managers help. And yeah... they get closer to each other, yk 🤭

There are probably some more jobs that would fit him, but these are some I could think of rn :P

Thank you so much for this ask, I really enjoyed this! 💙💙💙💙

[cyberpunkonline]

The Race for the Everything App in the West: Unraveling the Quest for Digital Domination

In the neon-drenched, cyberpunk reality of the 21st century, the digital realm is witnessing a colossal battle, reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's speculative universes. Tech corporations, with their sights set on the horizon, are not just competing but are on an ambitious quest to forge the "Everything App"—a digital El Dorado that promises to centralize our online lives. This pursuit, led vigorously by X (formerly known as Twitter) and echoed by a symphony of other platforms, is transforming the way we interact with digital services.

At the heart of this evolution lies a simple, yet profound strategy: expansion beyond core functionalities. Apps that once specialized in specific domains are now crossing into territories uncharted, offering a suite of services that range from messaging and social networking to financial transactions and beyond. This trend is not a mere coincidence but a calculated move towards creating a digital ecosystem where users can perform every conceivable online activity within a single app.

The Vanguard of the Everything App

X, under the stewardship of Elon Musk, is potentially the most audacious contender in the race. Initially a platform for microblogging, X is now venturing into areas like payment processing and content creation, aiming to transform itself into an indispensable tool for its users. However, X is not alone in this pursuit. Apps like WeChat in China have already demonstrated the viability of the "everything app," serving as a model for Western counterparts.

Facebook (now Meta), with its vast suite of services including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus, is another titan striving to stitch together a comprehensive digital tapestry. Google, through its ecosystem encompassing Gmail, Google Pay, and YouTube, is also inching towards creating a unified experience. Meanwhile, Amazon's expansion into cloud services, media streaming, and even groceries underscores the same ambition: to be the one-stop digital shop for its users.

The Siren Song of Convenience

The allure of an everything app lies in its promise of unparalleled convenience. Imagine a digital Swiss Army knife that not only connects you with friends and family but also handles your finances, entertains, educates, and even shops for you. The potential benefits are immense, offering a seamless integration of digital services that could simplify user experience, enhance efficiency, and possibly even reduce the digital clutter of having multiple apps for different needs.

A Dystopian Shadow

However, beneath the glossy surface of convenience, there lurks a more sinister possibility. The consolidation of services into a single platform raises alarming concerns about privacy, data security, and monopolistic control over the digital lives of billions. The more we rely on a single app for our daily needs, the more we risk creating a digital monoculture vulnerable to surveillance, censorship, and exploitation. In a dystopian twist, the everything app could become the ultimate tool for digital hegemony, where choice is an illusion, and autonomy is traded for convenience.

The Unstoppable Momentum

Despite the dichotomy of potential outcomes, the race towards the everything app is unlikely to slow down. The convergence of services into unified platforms reflects a broader trend in digital evolution, driven by user demand for efficiency and the corporate quest for dominance. As this race accelerates, we find ourselves at a crossroads, navigating between the utopian dream of digital convenience and the dystopian nightmare of centralized control.

The everything app is both a looming threat and a beacon of progress in our communications landscape. Its emergence is a testament to our insatiable appetite for innovation and our willingness to explore the unknown. As we venture further into this digital frontier, the decisions we make today will shape the cybernetic world of tomorrow. The everything app is not just a possibility; it is an inevitability. Time will tell whether it becomes a tool for liberation or an instrument of control.

In the words of Neal Stephenson, we are coding our own new world, and in this world, the everything app stands as both the zenith of our aspirations and the nadir of our fears. As we hurtle towards this uncertain future, one thing is clear: the digital landscape will never be the same again. - REV1

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New SpaceTime out Wednesday....

SpaceTime 20240529 Series 27 Episode 65

Intriguing features discovered in new images of the Jovian ice moon Europa

New Images of the Jovian ice moon Europa taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft have turned up some intriguing features.

A new model for formation of free-floating planets

Astronomers believe gravitational perturbations between stars in dense cluster could fling orbiting planets out of their birth systems and into interstellar space.

Perseverance collects its 24th rock sample

NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover has collected its 24th rock core sample in Jezero Crater.

The Science Report

Fish oil supplements associated with a 13% increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation.

A famous strip of ancient Egyptian pyramids pointing to a long-lost branch of the river Nile.

Twitter under the control of Jack Dorsey appeared to have been overlooking misinformation.

Alex on Tech is Microsoft’s new recall feature spying on you

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States.  The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science.  SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research.  The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network.  Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor.  Gary’s always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. Later, Gary became part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and was one of its first presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth.  The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually.  However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage.  Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently.  StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016.  Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

[mariacallous]

In his spare time, Tony Eastin likes to dabble in the stock market. One day last year, he Googled a pharmaceutical company that seemed like a promising investment. One of the first search results Google served up on its news tab was listed as coming from the Clayton County Register, a newspaper in northeastern Iowa. He clicked, and read. The story was garbled and devoid of useful information—and so were all the other finance-themed posts filling the site, which had absolutely nothing to do with northeastern Iowa. “I knew right away there was something off,” he says. There’s plenty of junk on the internet, but this struck Eastin as strange: Why would a small Midwestern paper churn out crappy blog posts about retail investing?

Eastin was primed to find online mysteries irresistible. After years in the US Air Force working on psychological warfare campaigns he had joined Meta, where he investigated nastiness ranging from child abuse to political influence operations. Now he was between jobs, and welcomed a new mission. So Eastin reached out to Sandeep Abraham, a friend and former Meta colleague who previously worked in Army intelligence and for the National Security Agency, and suggested they start digging.

What the pair uncovered provides a snapshot of how generative AI is enabling deceptive new online business models. Networks of websites crammed with AI-generated clickbait are being built by preying on the reputations of established media outlets and brands. These outlets prosper by confusing and misleading audiences and advertisers alike, “domain squatting” on URLs that once belonged to more reputable organizations. The scuzzy site Eastin was referred to no longer belonged to the newspaper whose name it still traded in the name of.

Although Eastin and Abraham suspect that the network which the Register’s old site is now part of was created with straightforward moneymaking goals, they fear that more malicious actors could use the same sort of tactics to push misinformation and propaganda into search results. “This is massively threatening,” Abraham says. “We want to raise some alarm bells.” To that end, the pair have released a report on their findings and plan to release more as they dig deeper into the world of AI clickbait, hoping their spare-time efforts can help draw awareness to the issue from the public or from lawmakers.

Faked News

The Clayton County Register was founded in 1926 and covered the small town of Ekader, Iowa, and wider Clayton County, which nestle against the Mississippi River in the state’s northeast corner. “It was a popular paper,” says former coeditor Bryce Durbin, who describes himself as “disgusted” by what’s now published at its former web address, claytoncountyregister.com. (The real Clayton County Register merged in 2020 with The North Iowa Times to become the Times-Register, which publishes at a different website. It’s not clear how the paper lost control of its web domain; the Times-Register did not return requests for comment.)

As Eastin discovered when trying to research his pharma stock, the site still brands itself as the Clayton County Register but no longer offers local news and is instead a financial news content mill. It publishes what appear to be AI-generated articles about the stock prices of public utility companies and Web3 startups, illustrated by images that are also apparently AI-generated.

“Not only are the articles we looked at generated by AI, but the images included in each article were all created using diffusion models,” says Ben Colman, CEO of deepfake detection startup Reality Defender, which ran an analysis on several articles at WIRED’s request. In addition to that confirmation, Abraham and Eastin noticed that some of the articles included text admitting their artificial origins. “It’s important to note that this information was auto-generated by Automated Insights,” some of the articles stated, name-dropping a company that offers language-generation technology.

When Eastin and Abraham examined the bylines on the Register’s former site they found evidence that they were not actual journalists—and probably not even real people. The duo’s report notes that many writers listed on the site shared names with well-known people from other fields and had unrealistically high output.

One Emmanuel Ellerbee, credited on recent posts about bitcoin and banking stocks, shares a name with a former professional football player. When Eastin and Abraham started their investigation in November 2023, the journalist database Muck Rack showed that he had bylined an eye-popping 14,882 separate news articles in his “career,” including 50 published the day they checked. By last week, the Muck Rack profile for Ellerbee showed that output has continued apace—he’s credited with publishing 30,845 articles. Muck Rack’s CEO Gregory Galant says the company “is developing more ways to help our users discern between human-written and AI-generated content." He points out that Ellerbee’s profile is not included in Muck Rack’s human-curated database of verified profiles.

The Register’s domain appears to have changed hands in August 2023, data from analytics service Similar Web shows, around the time it began to host its current financial news churn. Eastin and Abraham used the same tool to confirm that the site was attracting most of its readership through SEO, targeting search keywords about stock purchasing to lure clicks. Its most notable referrals from social media came from crypto news forums on Reddit where people swap investment tips.

The whole scheme appears aimed at winning ad revenue from the page views of people who unwittingly land on the site’s garbled content. The algorithmic posts are garnished with ads served by Google’s ad platform. Sometimes those ads appear to be themed on financial trading, in line with the content, but others are unrelated—WIRED saw an ad for the AARP. Using Google's ad network on AI-generated posts with fake bylines could fall foul of the company's publisher policies, which forbid content that “misrepresents, misstates, or conceals” information about the creator of content. Occasionally, sites received direct traffic from the CCR domain, suggesting its operators may have struck up other types of advertising deals, including a financial brokerage service and an online ad network.

Unknown Operator

Eastin and Abraham’s attempts to discover who now owns the Clayton County Register’s former domain were inconclusive—as were WIRED’s—but they have their suspicions. The pair found that records of its old security certificates linked the domain to a Linux server in Germany. Using the internet device search engine Shodan.io, they found that a Polish website that formerly advertised IT services appeared associated with the Clayton County Register and several other domains. All were hosted on the same German server and published strikingly similar, apparently AI-generated content. An email previously listed on the Polish site was no longer functional and WIRED’s LinkedIn messages to a man claiming to be its CEO got no reply.

One of the other sites within this wider network was Aboutxinjiang.com. When Eastin and Abraham began their investigation at the end of 2023 it was filled with generic, seemingly-AI-generated financial news posts, including several about the use of AI in investing. The Internet Archive showed that it had previously served a very different purpose. Originally, the site had been operated by a Chinese outfit called “the Propaganda Department of the Party Committee of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” and hosted information about universities in the country’s northwest. In 2014, though, it shuttered, and sat dormant until 2022, when its archives were replaced with Polish-language content, which was later replaced with apparently-automated clickbait in English. Since Eastin and Abraham first identified the site it has gone through another transformation. Early this month it began redirects to a page with information about Polish real estate.

Altogether, Eastin and Abraham pinpointed nine different websites linked to the Polish IT company that appeared to comprise an AI clickbait network. All the sites appeared to have been chosen because they had preestablished reputations with Google that could help win prominence in search rankings to draw clicks.

Google claims to have systems in place to address attempts to game search rankings by buying expired domains, and says that it considers using AI to create articles with the express purpose of ranking well to be spam. “The tactics described as used with these sites are largely in violation of Search’s spam policies,” says spokesperson Jennifer Kutz. Sites determined to have breached those policies can have their search ranking penalized, or be delisted by Google altogether.

Still, this type of network has become more prominent since the advent of generative AI tools. McKenzie Sadeghi, a researcher at online misinformation tracking company NewsGuard, says her team has seen an over 1,000 percent increase in AI-generated content farms within the past year.

WIRED recently reported on a separate network of AI-generated clickbait farms, run by Serbian DJ Nebojša Vujinović Vujo. While he was forthcoming about his motivations, Vujo did not provide granular details about how his network—which also includes former US-based local news outlets—operates. Eastin and Abraham’s work fills in some of the blanks about what this type of operation looks like, and how difficult it can be to identify who runs these moneymaking gambits. “For the most part, these are anonymously run,” Sadeghi says. “They use special services when they register domains to hide their identity.”

That’s something Abraham and Eastin want to change. They have hopes that their work might help regular people think critically about how the news they see is sourced, and that it may be instructive for lawmakers thinking about what kinds of guardrails might improve our information ecosystem. In addition to looking into the origins of the Clayton County Register’s strange transformation, the pair have been investigating additional instances of AI-generated content mills, and are already working on their next report. “I think it’s very important that we have a reality we all agree on, that we know who is behind what we’re reading,” Abraham says. “And we want to bring attention to the amount of work we’ve done just to get this much information.”

Other researchers agree. “This sort of work is of great interest to me, because it’s demystifying actual use cases of generative AI,” says Emerson Brooking, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. While there’s valid concern about how AI might be used as a tool to spread political misinformation, this network demonstrates how content mills are likely to focus on uncontroversial topics when their primary aim is generating traffic-based income. “This report feels like it is an accurate snapshot of how AI is actually changing our society so far—making everything a little bit more annoying.”

[fuckyeahalfredmolina]

I’m back with yet another long post 

Going through Freddino’s filmography and body of work (because why not?) recently has been entertaining. I’ve changed my mind about a few of his work, some I used to like better, some I’ve fallen in love with again, and some I continue to hate. Ladies Man is one of those shows that I just cannot stand. I’ve watched it over a decade ago and didn’t like it. I thought maybe I’ll change my mind if I give it a second chance but it’s the type of a sitcom that just ages badly.

Ladies Man is basically the ‘Ugly Guy, Hot Wife’ trope. A trope is: a theme or device used in storytelling. They are usually common or overused. We can think of them like clichés, but on a greater scale.

There’s an entire website dedicated to TV tropes. This is their entry regarding the  ‘Ugly Guy, Hot Wife’ trope:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HugeGuyTinyGirl

‘Huge Guy, Tiny Girl’ trope.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UglyGuyHotWife

An excerpt from the entry: 

“While actors are held to a high standard of attractiveness, there are still leading roles available for plain looking guys, funny fat guys, and average joes (especially in comedy, which is one of the main reasons why this trope is so common in sitcoms). Many times, the guy is overweight due to the stigma. The beauty standard for women, however, is much higher; in order to be a leading lady it is an unspoken prerequisite that you are at the very least physically attractive.”

Freddino is huge (maybe not as huge as he is now but compared to every single woman co-star, he is pretty big), works with furniture, married to a hot, “small” wife. Another examples besides Ladies Man are According to Jim and The King of Queens though the latter is a bit better.

 If we can overlook the physical attributes, the characters and their personalities are not helping. 

This doesn’t apply entirely to the show but it has a fair resemblance:

“ [...] popular use of the trope is to have the hot wife be beautiful on the outside only, and on the inside she's a manipulative, materialistic, spiteful bitch who doesn't deserve her Henpecked Husband's kindness, especially if he is just a Meal Ticket for her. This could lead to An Aesop that looks aren't everything and that appearances are often deceptive.” From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HenpeckedHusband

Jimmy is a man’s man, he takes care of everyone, works hard, and just wants to play golf and Donna is just a meanie. She love shoes, she is controlling and wants things go her own way, gatekeeps the finances (and children’s names), withholds sex, doesn’t allow her husband to have adult magazines. 

I absolutely loathe shows that depict women as emotional and illogical and they get their own way at the end because their husbands lOvE them and “you can’t win with women”. I hate the “my wife is being unreasonable and illogical but I wove love her” premise in those sitcoms. 

Have you been in a relationship? Are you married? It doesn’t work like that at all. If it did, this is definitely abuse. 

This is somewhat similar to Boomer Humor (Google it) where either the husband hates the wife or both of them hate each other. I’m convinced Ladies Man was the blueprint of According to Jim because my god these two shows are practically the same and the plain misogyny is suffocating. 

The themes of the episodes: 

Jimmy vs Women (or should I say females?):

Every episode is about all the women being pitted against Jimmy while Jimmy is just trying to live/have fun/do something for himself. It always ends up with the women winning and Jimmy not only realizing his “mistake” but making it up to everyone. It’s like he can’t be himself, do the things he love, live his life without being punished. To a lot of women viewers, they’d consider this theme a “win” and a justified power move. It’s not actually and this just perpetuates the idea that marriage is a prison and men are miserable. 

Men are men and women are women: 

Men are visual beings, horny, ogle women. Jimmy and the young swimming instructor, Jimmy wanting sex after his wife just gave birth, Jimmy has/keeps an adult magazine, Jimmy defends men’s action regarding being attracted to other women. 

Donna is severely insecure, Donna is controlling, Donna and the rest of the women can go through public tantrums, Donna and the women’s idea of feminism is childish, Donna and the rest of the women can weaponize their tears (as in women only and exclusively cry to get their way).

Problems with the show: 

Modernity:

Half, if not all of the episode themes won’t be acceptable today. Scrutiny through the lens of modernity will lead to Ladies Man being an awful, misogynistic show.  The jokes won’t land in today’s world. Not only because they are not funny, but also the content will be unacceptable in today’s atmosphere. 

A simple example would be the young swimming instructor episode: they didn’t say how old she is but she definitely was a teenager or a young adult. Yet Jimmy was into her and everyone was okay with it because “boys will boys” thing. Do you think this will fly today? The show is just a repeated cycle of situations where misogyny and internalized misogyny are prevalent. 

It’s not genuinely funny:

I grew up watching American and a few British and Australian sitcoms. The 90s were a golden era for such shows. Not every show was good and humorous. I realize the 90s were a different era and humor was way, WAY different back then but there are many classic shows that survived the test of time. Compare Ladies Man to the Golden Girls (one of my favorite shows, not because Freddino is a huge fan). It was so progressive and surpassed its era. It is still one of the best sitcoms worldwide. English isn’t my first language and I’m not an American (or a western for that matter) but I can definitely say Golden Girl was a huge hit for more than three decades. 

Freddino is usually funny and he is a great  actor no doubt. Same can be said for Betty White and Dixie Carte. But they aren’t funny at all. The comedic timing is off for every character and the jokes just fall flat. 

You could say humor is subjective which is not entirely true:

https://qhhsubiquity.com/4735/humor/humor-isnt-as-subjective-as-you-think-it-is/

Also, Humor does/sometimes change as you grow older:

https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/351005

The comedy scene was male dominated for decades

Another reason for this show being awful is that the writers of most sitcoms especially in the 90s were men. This explains a lot actually. Though I did check the writer’s page of Ladies Man and there were a few women writing an episode or two but it was not specified which episodes they wrote. The creator is a man though. I bet the episode of pressuring or nagging Dona into having sex is definitely written by a man.

I understand not everyone is the same. I actually did read IMDb reviews and was amused by the positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes on the other hand is where shit got real lmao:

‘The fatal flaw is that nothing about Ladies Man rings remotely true. Not the characters. Not the relationships. Not the premise. Every scene is from Sitcom 101: setup, punch line, reaction; setup, punch line, reaction.”

Relationships are NOT like that. And yes it the typical, boring 90s sitcoms formula.

“Last time I checked, being whipped and belittled incessantly had little real comic value. Ladies Man is no exception.”

Ugh.

[oetter]

Hi 😌 I saw you were doing hockey player season predictions with tarot! How unique! Can you do a reading for my fave boy Pyotr Kochetkov?

so. i pulled a total of 35 cards trying to get a read on this kid and i still don’t know if i’ve got him down. before this i didn’t know him really beyond what a quick google search and a seven minute highlight reel can show me so if this is deeply wrong, i'm so sorry. strap in, long post incoming

starting off with general “vibe” pulls

cups: ace, 4, 9, 9, 10, page r swords: 2, 2 pentacles: 5, 6 r, knight r, queen r wands: 4 r, king r major arcana: hanged man, star r, hermit r

the amount of cups is telling me off the bat that he’s a deeply emotional and intuitive person. coupled with his cancer sun and scorpio moon, i’d say that’s a hell of a good start. the ace of cups is giving newness, freshness, and opportunity to open up and learn and grow emotionally. the page of cups reversed shows emotionally immaturity, which makes sense because he’s young. the page reversed and the four tell me he’s a little afraid of opening up and in a bit of a creative rut, but the two nines i pulled are saying “don’t worry, you’ll find satisfaction.” finding his place has been a long time coming, and the ten says he’s going to settle in just fine.

i pulled the two of swords twice. to me, this is saying he needs to remain patient and have caution in order to maintain the current state of affairs. difficult choices are in store.

the wands in this case are kind of difficult to dissect. i don’t know koochie at all, and both of these cards are giving insight into a home life and behind-the-scenes turmoil that i don’t feel i have the knowledge to impart accurately. i’ll give y’all the keywords though, maybe you’ll understand better than me: lack of support, transience, home conflicts, feeling unwelcome, lack of roots, impulsive, overbearing, unachievable expectations, forceful, domineering, ineffective, weak leader.

similar to the wands are the pentacles, where i don’t feel knowledgeable enough to really give good insight. what it tells me, though, is that a shifting of perspective and reevaluation of priorities is a good idea.

next up are the three major arcana, which are also kind of tough. they seem to be saying the same thing: uncertainty and a lack of motivation demand a realignment. the reversed hermit has a good connection to make between the card and his being a goalie, because it represents working alone and—to take it a step further—feeling like an outcast.

not a lot of positive messages so far, but that’s okay.

i then pulled a number of targeted cards for different areas of his life.

past: the devil, five of cups reversed present: knight of swords, the tower reversed future: justice, nine of pentacles relationships: page of wands career: king of wands finances: ace of pentacles motivation: two of cups incentive: three of swords reversed

whatever the truth is as far as his past, it’s reading like a backstory for sure. the devil is showing feelings of emptiness, lack of fulfillment, and lack of control. the five of cups reversed signals acceptance and moving on.

the present is calling for him to remain steadfast and strong. even as turmoil surrounds him, he needs a strong foundation and he will remain upright.

the cards i pulled for the future are really saying one thing to me: we receive the due rewards of our deeds (name that quote). what he reaps he will sow. his future is up to how he chooses to live in the present. that’s kind of boring, but it’s literally what the cards say.

relationships. page of wands. really just saying he’s excited to explore! he’s ready to get out there and make friends, talk to people and make connections.

career. king of wands. leadership, vision, big picture, taking control, daring decisions, boldness, optimism. achievement in career, respected position, mentorship. he’s going to be amazing.

finances. ace of pentacles. okay, money. he’s a pro hockey player. he’s gonna have a lot of money. this card is really just telling me his life will be rife with big opportunities. he’ll be prosperous. be more on the nose why don’t ya

motivation. two of cups. he wants friends!! he wants to be part of a strong goalie tandem. he wants a strong partnership. like that’s literally it.

incentive. three of swords reversed. basically, growth. learning from experience. this card indicates he may go through a rough time, but that’s okay. he’ll be able to move on beautifully.

all in all, the reading i got from him is this: he’s young, he’s got a lot to learn and grow from. he’s very much Just A Person. he’s going to be just fine.

[labbaik-ya-hussain-as]

*Farewell* *to* *Modi.*

You will be shocked to see how India has changed in last 5 years

*1.* India is now suffering from Highest Unemployment Rate in 45 years _(NSSO data)_

*2.* All Top 10 most polluted cities in world are now in India _(WHO data)_

*3.* Number of Indian Soldiers Martyred is highest in 30 years now _(Washington Post)_

*4.* India now has Highest Income Inequality in 80 years _(Credit Suisse Report)_

*5.* India has become world's worst country for women _(Thomas Reuters Survey) _

*6.* Kashmiri youth joining militancy is highest in 10 years _(Indian Army data)_

*7.* Indians Farmers suffered Worst Price Crash in 18 years _(WPI Data)_

*8.* Highest ever Cow related violence and Mob Lynchings on record after Modi became PM _(India Spend Data)_

*9* India is now World's Second most Unequal Country _(Global Wealth Report)_

*10* Indian Rupee is now Asia's worst Performing Currency _(Market Data)_

*11* India has become World's Third Worst Country in Environment Protection _(EPI 2018)_

*12* First time in history of India, foreign funding and corruption is legalized _(Finance Bill 2017)_

*13* Our current PM is the Least accountable Prime Minister in 70 years _(First PM to give 0 press conferences)_

*14* First time in history of India, CBI vs CBI, RBI vs Govt, SC vs Govt fights happened because Modi wanted control of all democratic Institutions

*15* First time in history of India, 4 Supreme Court judges gave a press conference to say _”Democracy is in Danger”_

*16* First time in history of India, top secret Defence documents stolen from Defence Ministry office _*(Rafale)*_

*17* Intolerance and Religious Extremism is highest in 70 years _(Personal observation because no data for this exists)_

*18* Indian Media is now Worst in 70 years _(Personal Observation)_

*19* First time in history of India, if you criticize our Govt, you will be labeled *Anti-National*

Biggest proof for this - Try to forward this message on WhatsApp and Modi Bhakts around you will call you Anti-National.

But we must not fear. None of what I said in this message is a Jumla. All the data given above is *100% verified FACTS*. You can verify them yourself by doing a google search on any point. *This is the reality of what has happened to our India. *

*Modi Govt is the Worst Govt India has ever had in last 70 years.*

Some people say that 2019 elections are the last elections that will happen in India. Because if Modi wins this time, he will desperately want to control all institutions of our democracy and we will become a *dictator ship.*

Do not fear, share this message.

Save our Democracy. Save our India.

[rageagainstthesink]

W-A-S-D

Dear reader,

It's been a while since I last posted anything, hasn't it? My bad.

I have been juggling between Don't Starve Together (now that we have the Scrappy Scavengers expansion), Stardew Valley (now that the 1.6 update is finally out), Game Dev Tycoon, - all financed by my boyfriend - and greedy good ol’ Time Princess.

I'm starting to understand why my mom doesn't want my baby brother to play video games at a young age considering my… uh, outstanding dedication to them.

Like I said before in my now 404-ed Blogger page, this isn't even close to being my first time gaming around, so I’m well acquainted with the myths that can surround this infamous activity.

I'm no Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler’s character in the 2015 movie Pixels), but according to a few online dictionaries I found, I am a gamer, a.k.a. a person who enjoys video games. As a hobby, not as a profession.

If you never cared to Google it like me, you might ask yourself, what’s a video game? Where do they even come from?

Did aliens bring them to Earth, maybe?

Well, not quite.

I hope not to disappoint the world's most beloved gamer, Henry Cavill, with my poor research skills...

But yeah, taking Wikipedia as my source, video games can be defined as a form of entertainment that involves interacting with an input device, such as your keyboard if you're a PC gamer, to generate visual feedback on a display device, e.g. a monitor. It's similar to how Newton's Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.

During their earlier history, video games were mostly related to research projects at universities and large corporations as academic and promotional devices, rather than to the general public's entertainment.

One of the first examples of a modern video game that we know of was patented in January 1947 by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and it's a thing called a "cathode-ray tube amusement device”.

It basically consisted of an analog device that lets you move a dot on the screen to simulate a missile being parabolically fired at paper drawings fixed to the screen, inspired by radar display technology. And, yes, the first video game ever was essentially an Angry Birds prototype.

Over the following years, other game patents were created with different means of display and whatever, but none of them were able to achieve the commercial success of Atari's inaugural arcade game, Pong, in 1972.

The release of this timeless video game played a pivotal role in establishing the industry as we know it today, not to mention that one of the first consoles ever was also released a couple months before in that same year; I'm talking about Magnavox' Odyssey home console.

Speaking of the Xbox’s great great great grandmother, it's well-known that video games tend to be classified by platform because of the differences there can be when comparing one piece of hardware to the other, so we have:

Arcade games

You can play these in the coin-operated machines of the same name, as seen in the beginning of Adam Sandler's Pixels movie. The classic single-game cabinet only allows you to play the one game it was designed for, yet this concept has been popular in the US since the 1970s, until it began dying down by the late 1990s when people started to bring the arcade experience home with consoles’ growing popularity and ever-developing technology.

Console games

These can be enjoyed in specialized electronic devices that consist of a main unit - the “console” - that has the hardware that you're supposed to connect with your display device of choice and a game controller like this one: 🎮.

Let's take a moment to reminisce here because, back in my days, you needed to buy a game's cartridge to be able to play it, which meant offline and immediate access at the cost of lower storage capacity and physical bulkiness. But, even before the world wide web, Control Video Corporation (CVC) was an early pioneer in downloadable games and cloud saving for consoles... before it went bankrupt during the 1983 video game crash and was merged with AOL.

CVC introduced the GameLine, a dial-up game distribution system designed for the Atari 2600 console and introduced in 1986. Despite its innovative concept, it was ahead of its time, lacked licensing from most video game companies, and ultimately failed, like most good things in life. Had they waited for the modern Internet and the Cloud to be created, they could have seen the same success as Xbox Live and PlayStation Network years later!

Due to coding and/or hardware incompatibilities, you can only play games in a console if they are designed for it, meaning you can't directly transfer a PlayStation 2 game into a PlayStation 4 despite them being brand models developed by the same company. Sony not sorry.

PC games

You can always download them to your desktop computer or laptop from their official website, if there's any, or from a trusty storefront like Steam… as long as the software requirements match. Since computers are not gaming-exclusive devices, there may and most likely will be differences when running the same game on another computer!

Mobile games

You can download these from a trustworthy website as an APK file to be installed on your cellphone or tablet, or just go ahead and use a digital distribution service like Google's Play Store or Apple's App Store, like the system might recommend. Though, much like PC games, these tend to have specifications that your phone must meet for them to run properly.

Smartphones and tablets are probably the only case of being both the input and the display device simultaneously without having traditional buttons as an input option, unlike the Nintendo Switch or the PlayStation Vita, and that must be exactly why so many people dislike mobile gaming.

Admittedly, some games can become more challenging with the whole “inaccurate touchscreen controls” part, notably in PUBG Mobile and Don't Starve Pocket Edition. Except the latter has shittier controls, per its Google Play reviews.

I haven’t played arcade games in a LONG time because my favorite arcade got super expensive in its last few years before closing down, leaving me with nothing but fond long-term memories of grabbing digital eggs using a basket, playing Coldplay's Yellow in a plastic guitar EVERY time, table-hockey-ing, etc.

However, I have been consistently trying out PC and mobile games across my lifespan. Especially the free-to-play ones, since my family didn't allow me to spend a single penny on video games when I was younger.

And, oh boy, isn't the list of games I've tried criminally long.

Blaming my unending passion for video games on my predisposition is only fair. I mean, I remember my mom was able to defeat Mario Bros.’ Bowser in a single day when I was a child, and hearing similar stories about her older sister's gaming prowess.

Come to think of it, we must've had a NES console back when all that happened, considering my faint memories of being thrilled to play Duck Hunt. That couldn't have happened irl otherwise.

Also, my cousins had a living room computer BRIMMING with, uh, ✨ free copies ✨ of various popular games that we often played together when we were in elementary school.

I did have a couple of consoles of my own, including some sort of green, translucent knock-off GameBoy I was gifted at a school event and what I think was a PlayStation, but quickly lost both.

My cousins were gifted a PlayStation 2 of their own later on, when it was a thing, until it got damaged because they were using pirate cartridges. Or so we were told back in the day; it could’ve been a dirty reading laser in reality, but, you know, my cousins lived in a very small town, so it was a miracle that they had that console in the first place.

I didn't get to bond with console games much because I found the controllers too difficult to use with my poor hand coordination, and couldn't practice much, so I was stuck with mobile Tetris and Bounce Tales, both of which I found in my grandpa's phones.

It wasn't until some time after my middle cousin passed me down her old Facebook account that I found what would be my main source of entertainment for the next year or so: social network games.

They were THE SHIT when I was middle school aged and Facebook kept spreading across all corners of Spanish-speaking countries.

Ever heard of FarmVille or Dragon City? These ancient Facebook games, and other titles, are a type of online game that is played through social media. They tend to have multiplayer gameplay mechanics and use real-time analytics to sort of motivate you to spend real money on in-game resources and/or consistently log in for rewards.

All social network games used to be browser games at first, meaning you could play them exclusively on Facebook desktop for instance, but as mobile gaming took off, many of the games were re-released for mobile as well.

But Facebook is not the only one who ventured into browser games. This category includes anything you can play using a web browser like Ecosia. They're mostly free-to-play and can be single-player or multiplayer, and are also grouped by their software platform, for example, Flash games.

A couple of famous examples include Club Penguin and the McDonald's Video Game, but personally I was more into Moshi Monsters and whatever “girly” games you could find on the in-browser hubs JuegosJuegos.com, friv.com and DressUpGames.com, in particular.

Even TV channels like Disney and Discovery Kids had TONS of Flash games available on their official websites when I was a kid, and so I spent a lot of my free time visiting those.

Then, tragedy struck: Adobe Flash stopped being supported between December 2020 and January 2021, mainly due to security concerns, dealing a debilitating blow to browser gaming. This sort of forced me to dive a lot more into what the Google Play Store and Steam had to offer.

While I’m pretty flexible in terms of the platforms I’ve tried, I remain selective when it comes to the genres. Although, that doesn't exactly mean I dislike any, just that I may prefer to watch the gameplay videos on YouTube most of the time.

For instance, I'm a big fan of the first 5 Five Nights at Freddy's (survival horror) installments and everything that came out after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (action-adventure), yet I have no intent of playing any of them myself. I'll stick with simulation and strategy games, which I excel at and relax with.

About video game genres, they're not really related to the setting or story of the game as literary genres are, but by the way the player interacts with the game.

I’m not diving into specifics here because games often incorporate key features from all genres all the time or blend them together into hybrids, making it useless to try to differentiate them. Plus, there are countless sub-genres to consider. Even the Dark Souls saga is considered to have its own genre!

Now, it's no secret that females and minority groups tend to get harassed in shooter and MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games’ communities, so that can obviously make me feel hesitant about joining those spaces.

Highly competitive environments often amplify the toxicity of the yappiest players, especially in multiplayer games, and that can lead to the misconception that, for instance, all League of Legends players are disgusting, when in reality it might only be a small percentage of ill-mannered people that's deterring potential new players. Then again, it is League of Legends that we're talking about here…

Circling back to Dark Souls, much like what SORRYLAG narrates in this video, I'd add that there's this weird pressure in the video game world about who can beat the games with the most challenging gameplays with no health penalties, or who can speedrun the fastest, or who discovers the most convoluted easter egg, that I just can't relate to as someone who's obsessed with Stardew Valley’s more peaceful essence.

It's hypocritical to bash or segregate others for enjoying the exact same thing you're doing just because they have less experience or different preferences.

I'm always up for a challenge, sure, but stressing over completing a difficult and super precise video game mission isn't my idea of fun.

And I refuse to think I'm less of a gamer just because I like mobile gaming, don't want to beat Sekiro and won't even pick up Duty's Call. I'm not doing this as a profession for a reason, you know? I am barely able to face one of Don't Starve Together’s bosses solo with the help of frog ponds.

Setting aside the standard fandom issues around them, I wouldn't say video games are a problem on their own. It's not Donkey Kong's fault that we've created so many stereotypes around a lifeless entertainment format.

Do they cause aggression and violence? No. A kid will not grow up to be violent because of a video game, unless their parents, teachers or community fail to teach them that it's not okay to act like that. Take it from someone who grew up playing Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (not knowing it wasn't about driving around and stealing hookers' money), and thus had all the potential in the world to become a samurai gangster, apparently.

Are they addictive? Look, those sneaky strategies to make us play more frequently like real-time statistics don't help, but truth is anything that makes you produce dopamine and other happy hormones will become addictive if you struggle with discipline and self control in general. Even food. We're just too scared of taking accountability as humans.

Do they cause loneliness or social isolation? It can be the case for some, but that doesn't mean all gamers are lonely. I mean, my boyfriend and I found each other, didn't we? Not to mention you'll fail at most multiplayer games with no teamwork or proper communication, and there are tons of online communities out there that welcome anonymous users, so how do you even get lonely if it's not by perspective?

Are they for kids, teens or men only? We're in 2024, come on. There's plenty of options for everybody.

Such a shame that some people will never get to experience the joys of playing video games because they're too stubborn to believe anything other than what one news article of dubious origin said.

We can't really force a person who dislikes video games for any reason to love them, of course, but it's always nice to see them understand that respecting others' likes and choices will not cause the end of the world, isn't it?

Personally, I tend to choose playing whatever video game I'm trying to (slowly) complete at the moment over asking people to hang out whenever I'm free, because going out is expensive anyway. This isn't affecting my quality of life any more than pollution does because I still do my chores and work despite the suffocating heat of a tropical summer, so there's that.

In conclusion, as long as video games don't get in the way of your self-care, daily habits, finances and overall health, you should feel free to play them as much as you can, and want.

Unlike the mistaken belief that video games will ruin your brain or contribute to obesity per se, you can get benefits from most of them, actually. As of today, we have the VR goggles + omnidirectional treadmill + exploring Skyrim by foot combo for fitness purposes, puzzle games for cognitive skills development, strategy games for planning and problem-solving, action games for reaction time improvement, and so on.

But, once again, gaming shouldn't negatively impact your life. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read about that one Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament where a female participant had to step out due to the odor. Even sports athletes shower before competing, so my hobby is not their excuse for being dirty!

What do you think about video games, though? Yay, or nay?

Until next time!

- N

[kiranapassionategamer]

Get Started with the Indian Ludo Earning App

Ludo, a traditional board game with ancient roots, has evolved into a digital phenomenon across India. Today, not only can you relive the nostalgic charm of Ludo through your smartphone, but you can also earn real money while doing so. Indian Ludo earning apps have surged in popularity, combining the classic gameplay of Ludo with the thrilling opportunity to win cash prizes. The appeal lies not just in the entertainment value, but also in the financial incentives that these apps offer.

How to Get Started

Getting started with an Indian Ludo earning app is straightforward. First, choose a reputable app from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Look for apps with high ratings and positive reviews to ensure credibility. Download and install the app by following the on-screen instructions. Once installed, you'll typically need to register an account, which might require verification through an email or mobile number. After setting up your account, you can begin playing Ludo and potentially earning money.

Understanding the App's Features

Most Ludo earning apps come equipped with various game modes, including classic, quick, and master versions. Each mode offers unique challenges and rules, catering to different player preferences. To navigate the app, use the main menu to access different games and features. You can join competitions or practice to sharpen your skills.

Tips for Success

To excel in Ludo and enhance your chances of winning, consider the following strategies:

Control the Center: Occupy the center of the board to give yourself more options and block opponents.

Spread Your Tokens: Don’t just race one token to the finish; spread out your tokens to increase your flexibility.

Plan Your Moves: Anticipate your opponents’ moves and plan accordingly to block them or escape threats.

Use Safe Spots: Keep your tokens in safe spots as much as possible to avoid being captured.

Be Patient: Sometimes, the best strategy is to wait for the right roll.

Prioritize Tokens: Focus on moving the tokens that are closest to your starting point to the finish line first.

Take Calculated Risks: When the opportunity arises, take risks to capture opponent tokens, but be mindful of potential vulnerabilities.

Understand Dice Patterns: While dice rolls are random, understanding probability can help in making more informed decisions.

Learn from Defeats: Every loss provides insight into your strategy; use it to refine your approach.

Practice Regularly: Frequent gameplay will improve your familiarity with the rules and nuances of the game.

Managing Your Finances

Responsible financial management is crucial when playing games for money. Set a budget for how much you’re willing to spend and stick to it. Always use secure payment methods for deposits and withdrawals, such as credit cards, e-wallets, or bank transfers. Be aware of the transaction fees and withdrawal limits. It's important to understand the terms and conditions of your earnings and cashouts to avoid any surprises.

Community and Social Interaction

Indian Ludo earning apps often feature robust community elements. You can connect with other Ludo players, exchange tips, and participate in tournaments. Utilizing these social features not only enhances the fun but can also provide strategic advantages. Engaging with the community can lead to learning new tactics and forming alliances that can be beneficial in team modes.

Responsible Gaming Practices

It’s essential to engage in responsible gaming. Set time and money limits to ensure that the game remains a source of enjoyment rather than stress. Most apps offer tools to help you track your spending and gaming time. Additionally, be aware of the safety features within the app to protect your privacy and data.

Starting with an Indian Ludo earning app opens up a world of fun and financial opportunity. By following the steps outlined, you can embark on an enjoyable and potentially profitable Ludo journey. Dive into the vibrant world of Ludo, practice your strategy, manage your finances wisely, and most importantly, play responsibly. The excitement and rewards of playing Ludo for real money await.

[zkyfall]

14 Questions ✨👻

Thanks for tagging me, @sweatandwoe and @dreamyonahill 🥰!

Nickname: IRL it’s a more masculine shortening of my given name. If someone uses my full name we’re Conducting Business. Online I’m Zky 👨‍🚀

Sign: 🛑 /jk its Virgo and yes I’m a neurotic perfectionist but I try to choose peace and keep it under control 

Height: 178cm/ 5′10″ 

Last thing I googled: "cm to inches” lmfaooo the metric system is admittedly superior but damned if I can remember it

Amount of sleep: Not enough

Dream job: Saw an artist at a con the other day that sells cute fanart and art of their OCs to cover their cat rescue costs and I think that would be nice. Or finance coach for people with money anxiety. 

Wearing: Denim short shorts + Denim Shirt over a cat tank top 😎🌞unusually fashionable today

Movie/books/media that summarizes you: The Stranger by Albert Camus, I read it as a child and it resonated so much with past me, I’m hesitant to re-read it now and re-examine myself. At the time though, it left me with the strongest impression that while you can choose to embrace apathy and insulate yourself from the rest of the world, it will kill you for it. 

Favorite song: Currently In undertow by Alvvays (gonna see them live this fall SO EXCITED👏 ) 

Instrument: C grade Shower Singer 🤠can’t wait to go to karaoke again and force everyone to listen to classic country

Favorite author: Kathryn Ann Kingsley, the best Villain Romance author ever imho. Still insane over her necromancer series so if you’ve ever read one of her books pls tell me your thoughts 👀

Aesthetic: Generic cubicle worker, lots of sweaters and black slacks. Would love to be more fashionable one day but that day is not today. 

Random fun fact: I have eye implants because I lost a substantial amount of my vision by my late 20s. A decent amount of it was genetic (astigmatism) but a lot of it was my fault. Please try to limit screen time to four hours a day and, when performing close work (reading, writing, anything on a computer or phone) take breaks every 20 minutes to look at something more than 20 Ft. away for 20 seconds.

...that wasn’t really fun. I guess what IS fun is that technically I might be considered a cyborg 🤔?

Anyways! Happy Monday, tagging @bucky-yes, @riddlcr, @agoutighost, and @bennidraws Feel free to ignore if you’ve already done or want to stay sexy and mysterious on main 😘

[future-of-educationandlearning]

Inverse Proportionality Explained

fancy term for this is "inverse proportionality". Here's the core idea:

When two things multiply together to always give the same result, as one gets bigger, the other has to get smaller to keep things balanced.

Examples Across Disciplines

Finance: Imagine a pizza party budget of $20. If each pizza costs $5, you can buy 4 pizzas (20 / 5 = 4). If the pizzas suddenly cost $10, you can only buy 2 pizzas (20 / 10 = 2). Price and the number of pizzas you can buy have an inverse relationship.

Economics: Demand and price often have this relationship. Let's say a limited-edition toy is $100, and 50 people want it. But, if the price goes down to $20, maybe 250 people want it. More people can afford it, so demand goes up when the price goes down.

Psychology: Think of attention like a spotlight. If you focus it narrowly (high intensity), you can do fewer tasks at once. Spread that attention wide (low intensity), and you can handle more tasks, but less deeply.

Seeing as math constant

9 × 2 = 6 x 3 = (first variable -3) x (second variable + 1) = BUT product stays constant

OR almost constant in certain not exact situations

History: Empires provide an interesting example. The larger an empire's territory (quantity #1), often the more thinly its resources and control are spread (quantity #2). This can make them vulnerable to problems.

Humanities: Imagine trying to perfectly translate a poem. The more you stick to the literal words (quantity #1), the less you might capture the feeling or 'poetry' of it (quantity #2), and vice versa.

Physics: Gears! A small gear turning a large gear means the large gear turns slower (lower speed), but with more power (force). Speed and force are inversely related.

Google search to VISUALLY learn

Electronics: In a circuit with a fixed voltage, as you increase resistance, the current flowing through it decreases.

The easier the noose (the red color below), (the more the green will flow).

The stricter the noose (the red color below), (the less the green will flow).

Chemistry: Mixing solutions. If you have 50ml of a super-concentrated chemical, to keep the strength the same, you'd likely dilute it with 50ml of water. More volume = less concentration to maintain consistency.

Biology: Think of how your heart pumps blood. A faster heart rate (quantity #1) means each individual beat pumps a smaller volume of blood (quantity #2).

Key Point: Understanding these relationships helps you predict changes in systems and understand the trade-offs that exist in many areas!