That’s horrible, but I was relieved to learn that CPS doesn’t stand for, “ChIld Protective Services,” in the UK. I was expecting a much darker story when I clicked.

Jesus, I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize it was that bad. That’s insane.

Sure, no problem. Also, I think it would be disingenuous to pretend that at least some of this backlash isn’t from people who don’t like the idea that their beliefs may not be objective facts. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t struggle with that from time to time.

But the real problem I have with these bots is that they can never capture the kind of nuance vetting a source requires. The Raw Story ranks high on credibility because they don’t publish lies, but they don’t publish anything worthwhile either. Most of their, “stories,” are second hand accounts of something someone (who may or may not be credible) said on CNN, or how a politician or pundit got mocked on social media, and then given a title that implies the incident was more significant than it was. It’s difficult to judge something like that with an algorithm that simply looks for, “Credibility,” and, “Bias.”

The bot is crap. This is how it rates Raw Story, a clickbait factory that churns out shallow articles with dramatic, misleading headlines. It just produces slop for liberal Boomers to fill up their Facebook feed, but based on the bot’s reply, you’d think it was the Gaurdian.

This is actually why I kinda liked Pulaski. When she first meets him, she calls bullshit on the idea that he has no emotions. She mispronounces his name, and when Data corrects her, she immediately hones in on that; why should you have a preference if you don’t feel anything about it? But people keep telling her that he doesn’t have emotions, so she’s basically like, “Alright, fine, I’ll treat him like a calculator.” And honestly, why wouldn’t you? If he doesn’t have emotions, then why bother with pleasantries? It’s not like he’s going to get offended. She eventually does come around to him, but she does that by basically coming to the conclusion that he does care, given his actions during that episode with the children and the aging disease (I don’t remember the name and I’m too lazy to look it up).

It was always very clear to me that Data had emotions. How could he not? He has desires, wants, preferences…you can’t have those things without feeling something. It just seems like they’re very distant, numb feelings, rather than strong sensations. And it kinda makes sense to build him that way; Lore was created with much more advanced emotions, and he’s a little psychotic. It makes more sense to have his feelings be slightly out of reach and let them grow with his positronic brain, so he can learn to handle them over time.

I never liked the, “emotion chip,” solution to Data’s feelings. It seems like they never explored his emotional development because they didn’t want to make any status quo changes on a mostly episode-of-the-week show. Then they created an emotion McGuffin they never intended to use and said, “fuck it, let’s use it for the movie!” But in the end, I believe we were always meant to think the same thing about Data as we were about Spock: “I know this guy says he doesn’t have emotions, but I think he’s full of shit.”

Yeah, you know what’s great for global political stability? Assassinating the heads of state of countries with massive nuclear arsenals.

Yeah, I meant people generally give away this data, not you specifically, and again, I can see the potential for abuse, but alcohol isn’t like other goods and services. When a bartender serves you alcohol, they become legally liable for your actions if you overconsume, in civil and (in some states) criminal court, and for good reason; irresponsible alcohol sales can kill people. Regulating how this data can be used is one thing, but sharing data on what customers are liabilities is objectively good, not just bars, but public safety.

Your email app will give your messages to other companies, your navigation app will share your exact location with marketers, and your dating app will sell your sexual preferences to the highest bidder, but sure, bars having a way to warn each other which costumers tried to assault a waitress is a bridge to far.

Yeah, and a lot of this will depend on how it’s used. If I were still in the service industry and I saw that a guy had been to 20 bars in the last year, and I saw he got flagged at one for violence, I would think, “Well, this doesn’t seem to be a pattern of behavior, maybe he wasn’t the instigator, I’ll keep an eye on him but I’m not too worried.” But I could see a lot of larger places, like clubs, who aren’t hurting for business, just rejecting people who are flagged out of hand. The information seems objectively good to have, but the application could be really problematic.

That’s very true, although I think it’ll be unlikely that an individual bartender will get blamed for overserving in a large venue. I worked at a relatively small venue (280 at capacity) and on a busy night it would be difficult to tell you who served an individual customer, much less who gave him the drink that, “overserved,” them.

Possibly controversial opinion, but this sounds reasonable. The flags they can put on customers are, “violence, assault, destruction of property, sexual assault, fraud, and theft.” Those aren’t petty gripes like, “rude,” or, “poor tipper.” I was bar staff for a while, and I’d have wanted to know if the guy I was serving got violent the last time he went out.

That being said, I could see how this system could be abused. If one power-tripping bouncer claims you sexually assaulted someone, and no one will serve you anymore, that’s bullshit. Some regulations around how businesses use these databases would be good.

Honestly, I spent a lot of years tending bar, and most of the time, if someone was too drunk, it was my fault. Sure, there were times when someone was pre-gaming too hard or snuck in alcohol, but 9 times out of 10, if someone overconsumed, it was because I overserved.

No, at least not most animals. There was a study a while back that showed that animals think by reducing the world to a series of binary choice that they react to in the moment. I imagine it’s a lot like when you’re playing a sport or video game and things get very intense and fast paced; your inner monologue isn’t telling you what your next move will be every second, you’re just reacting on instinct. That’s probably how animals see the world all the time.

That being said, “animals,” is a broad category, and some of them may be capable of creating an abstract narrative for themselves. It was recently discovered that whale songs have a phonetic alphabet, which means their language may be as complex as ours. If that’s the case, they may be capable of using that language to build an internal monologue.

I still get emails from my dormant account, and according to my Gmail, the sender is, “X (formerly Twitter),” so I don’t think we’re done with that yet.

Oh no, did they? I haven’t had one in a while…

I’m a Mucho Mango man myself, but they’re all good choices.

Arizona Iced Tea.

Later on Tuesday, Biden appeared to tone down his criticism of Netanyahu. Asked whether Netanyahu was “playing politics with the war”, Biden said: “I don’t think so. He’s trying to work out a serious problem he has.”

Every time he starts to give something halfway close to a good response to something insane happening in Gaza, he walks it back within days.

The controller was weird, but they didn’t have a template yet for what a joystick controller should look like. Also, it makes a lot more sense if you understand that you’re never supposed to the D-Pad/Joystick at the same time. Left hand goes on the D-Pad handle for 2D games, Joystick handle for 3D (some third-party developers didn’t understand this though).

Yup. Sly Cooper still looks great as well.