Psychopathic Algorithms, Disposable Culture, and SPORTSBALL.
Good morning, my poppets! Wanted to share that our firm did a study on public opinions on tech and wouldn’t you know it, they reflect our shared and deeply-rooted love-hate relationship with the computers in our pockets. Check it out!
Also, it's a huge primary election in CA this morning, SO GO VOTE YER BUTTZ OFF PLS.
TO THE INTERWEBS!
President Tantrum rescinded the White House invitation to Super Bowl Champion pigskin sportsballers the Philadelphia Eagles because many of the players refused to attend and/or stand for the anthem, depending on who’s talking to the press at this moment. POTUS also took back the White House invitation to the 2017 NBA Champion (note to self: different kind of sportsballers) Golden State Warriors for the same reason.
I’ll leave this lede sentence here with absolutely no comment: “A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have built a psychopathic AI using images pulled from Reddit.” J/K FRIENDS, THIS IS HOW THE ROBOT UPRISING BEGINS. And I think we all need to lovingly bookmark this link so that we may produce it with flourish anytime someone in tech says “but, but, but, algorithms are agnostic,” read it aloud in your best British accent, and proclaim that humans write algorithms, and humans can be monstrous garbage creatures who program named-for-Hitchcock technology for psychopathy. AND THEY ARE PULLING IMAGES FROM REDDIT, it just can’t get any better.
If you live in a major coastal city and/or have friends who live in coastal cities, you’ve likely seen cloying instagram pictures posted from an “art installation” called The Museum of Ice Cream. I’ve never been to the one in San Francisco because a) I hate joy b) would like to think I’m still kind of an art snob in some small way and c) because I’m cheap AF and refuse to pay money to line up for things. But walking around SF’s Financial District, I have seen the plastic remnants of the “Museum”: tiny plastic sprinkles from one of the exhibits that cling to SF sidewalks like so many of our dreams. Well, Friend of the Missive and journalist at MarketWatch Max Cherney decided to utilize the greatest sunshine tools of our digital age - the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request - to find out just WTF is going on in. And the article delivers: come for the impressive number of ice cream puns present in the first four paragraphs, stay for the fact that this paean to selfies makes a shit-ton of money while gathering imitators and complaints from environmentalists.
And finally, Reductress hits it right in the feels: QUIZ: Are You White Enough to Smoke Weed Without Consequence?
Kisses, my pretties. See you tomorrow.