For an Ailing Feinstein, a Fight Over the Family Fortune
As Dianne Feinstein, 90, struggles to function in the Senate, a dispute within her family over control of her late husband’s estate is another difficult chapter at the end of a long career.
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bleak
The Right-Wing Avant-Garde in American Fiction
Image: Jon Rafman, You Are Standing in an Open Field (Pandemonium), 2020 Unfortunately, I have to report that downtown New York does indeed have a cohesive avant-garde. Here is an insular community, committed to the repulsion of the status quo, that has produced at least one new literary mode. It’s unfortunate, though,
Nameless Feeling — Real Life
Nothing else needs to be said or thought when you can appeal to vibes
While seemingly open-ended and allowing for an infinite recombination of elements, the idea of “vibes” is reductive. It discourages the more difficult work of interpretation and the search for meaning that defines human experience.
As an analytic, vibes don’t connect feelings and consequence; as such, it is symbiotic with passive modes of media consumption.
neural networks behave in ways similar to vibes in capturing patterns in media and culture, online or otherwise. Both serve as perspectives that focus on associations across vast amounts of data or impressions.
These systems can only instrumentalize taste; they turn any expression of self into a reductive data point meant to generate more data at the same level. They presuppose that “liking” just means more “liking” and that is as deep as our desire can be. As with vibes, these metrics carry no context or narrative; they can tell you nothing about how or why something might be desirable, only that they vaguely seem like they might be desirable because they seem similar to other things that are desirable.
culture
Anchor workers scramble for lawyers, money to buy brewery
Anchor workers say parent company Sapporo will take their offer to buy the brewery seriously — if they can come up with a serious offer
san-franciscoLessons Learned in Ukraine: A Year of Combat, the Legion, and How You Too Can Serve
From Aid to Ops On my first night on contract with the Legion a year ago, we drove 6 hours to the Kharkiv oblast for a 0200hrs rendezvous to participate in a multi-team ambush. I was instructed to pick up an ex-British Royal Marine named Kruger, then get a couple anti-tank and anti-personnel mine
DoorDash Banned Discussing Work Issues, Illegally Fired Activist, NLRB Alleges
DoorDash Inc. illegally prohibited office employees from discussing working conditions and fired one because of their organizing efforts, US labor board prosecutors alleged.
DoorDash also engaged in illegal interrogations and surveillance of employees’ workplace activism, according to the complaint, and terminated an employee because they formed an organization, the Service Desk Analysts group, to address working conditions there.
tech-worker-organizing
How PinkyDoll Mesmerized the Internet
Her TikTok catchphrase, “Ice cream so good,” has become a meme.
Amid Protests, Elia Kazan Receives His Oscar (Published 1999)
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film
Turning driverless cars into unicorns: A night with the group ‘coning’ Cruise & Waymo
“Cones migrate!” another member answered. “It’s a seasonal thing with the Santa Ana winds, they start going north."
Rest in Power Brother Larry Griffin - IFPTE Local 21
The Executive Officers of IFPTE Local 21 and our entire Local 21 family mourn the passing of Brother Laurence “Larry” Griffin. Brother Griffin proudly served the citizens of San Francisco […]
San Francisco’s Only Democratic Socialist Lawmaker Now Has a Challenger
Rene Colorado is poised to run against Supervisor Dean Preston in 2024.
The US supreme court has dismantled our rights but we still believe in them. Now we must fight | Rebecca Solnit
The court is part of a gang of reactionaries clawing back rights we already won, which means we can win them back
news
Opinion | The True Threat of Artificial Intelligence
Technology forged by private markets won’t solve the world’s problems. It’ll only amplify them.
artificial-intelligence
Opinion | Half the Police Force Quit. Crime Dropped.
The charming town has a powerful tale to tell.
cops
Twitter's API keeps breaking, even for developers paying $42,000
Everything worked fine until Elon Musk took over.
Fans Built Her an Internet Empire. Now They’re Tearing It Down
Former Colleen Ballinger fans say the same access that made the comedian famous opened the door for toxic interactions.
food
Alito’s Reply in a Rival Publication Surprises ProPublica
The Wall Street Journal made the unusual decision to let Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. pre-empt ProPublica’s article about him in its opinion pages.
San Francisco's best Muni bar crawls
Our guide to barhopping S.F. along a single transit line
Tell, Show, Do, Review: An Essential Learning Blueprint | Maestro
One-and-done learning doesn’t work—the Tell, Show, Do, Review framework does. Learn how this framework can better your learning experiences
An organizing conversation
technicalPostgreSQL reconsiders its process-based model
In the fast-moving open-source world, programs can come and go quickly; a tool that has many users today can easily be eclipsed by something better next week. Even in this environment, though, some programs endure for a long time. As an example, consider the PostgreSQL database system, which traces its history back to 1986. Making fundamental changes to a large code base with that much history is never an easy task. As fundamental changes go, moving PostgreSQL away from its process-oriented model is not a small one, but it is one that the project is considering seriously.
Security Research Device - Apple Security Research
Get an iPhone dedicated to security research through the Apple Security Research Device program. Learn how to apply.
The Last Page Of The Internet | Defector
Gradually over the last decade, Reddit went from merely embarrassing but occasionally amusing, to actively harmful, to—mainly by accident—essential. As the platform that swallowed niche message boards, it became home to numerous small communities of surprisingly helpful enthusiasts, and grew into a repository of arcane knowledge about, and instantly available first-hand expertise on, a staggering […]
We are living through the end of the useful internet. The future is informed discussion behind locked doors, in Discords and private fora, with the public-facing web increasingly filled with detritus generated by LLMs, bearing only a stylistic resemblance to useful information.
tech-industry
The Instant Pot Failed Because It Was a Good Product
A one-hit wonder is never enough.
finance
If You Post a Delicious Bagel Sandwich on the Internet, Do You Have to Say Where You Got It?
A TikTok hunt for a New York bagel started as a joke beef over “gatekeeping”—and ended as a story about how going viral doesn't always have a happy ending.
Faced With the Rising Right, Spain’s Left Is Struggling to Build a Common Front
Spanish deputy prime minister Yolanda Díaz has hailed a unity deal that will see the Left run together in July’s snap election. The deal hasn’t pleased everyone — but it could help keep the far right from power.
IATSE Launches Gameworkers.org, First-Ever Video Game Industry Study - IATSE
LOS ANGELES, CA — Continuing the union’s 130-year legacy of championing the rights of entertainment workers, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) announced the initialization of the 2023 […]